Event Details
Oct 6
Muse Art Gallery
In Focused, Helen Kerridge invites us to look closely at the things we might otherwise overlook. A glass milk bottle, a Crown Lynn vessel, a bowl of lemons, the delicate glint of crystal: familiar objects are rendered with extraordinary precision, yet become vessels for memory, carrying traces of the people, places and rituals associated with them.
The exhibition title speaks both to Kerridge’s meticulous eye and to the way this body of work has been made. Before computers and Photoshop, Kerridge worked as a photographic retoucher, developing the precision, patience and understanding of light and tone that continue to inform her painting. In contrast to the speed and distraction of contemporary life, painting offers Kerridge a slower, more attentive way of working. Time is central to the paintings: fruit ripens and fades, light moves across glass, and objects endure as the lives around them change. Through paint, Kerridge momentarily holds these fleeting things still.
Focused is an invitation to pause and look beyond the surface of an object to consider what it might hold: a memory, a story, a person or a moment. In giving these humble things her full attention, Kerridge asks us to give them ours.