5th - 18th May 2011

‘Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick? - Yes indeed, a whole lot better. This is visual stimulation, but without the need for your eyes to water! This is pleasure for the eye. I hope you find something here that tickles, delights, excites and soothes your retina... Definitely better than the stick.’                                                                                                                                                Simon Garden

From pigment to figment, Simon Garden’s paintings explore the possibilities of painted surface and stretch the credulity of imagination. There are many themes and motifs that appear throughout Garden’s work, all add to a sense of the familiar, yet in a faraway and unfamiliar land.  Symbolism is not always easily apprehended, even if it may appear so at first. Visual puns are often offset by rogue happenings; it is not so much the proverbial devil that we see in Garden’s paintings of crossroads, rather, we are much more likely to see an anonymous subject scaling walls and slinking out of sight. These scenes simultaneously disrupt the immediacy of visual language, yet they introduce exciting and challenging elements that confront the regularity of appearances – much in the same way that our dream worlds present security and unfamiliarity in the same instance.

Thompson’s Gallery Marylebone welcome Simon Garden’s fifth exhibition with the gallery and hope that you will take the opportunity to see his latest works.