Crumbling Isthmus
Philip Elbourne
Husk, London, 15th January – 8th February 2020

Philip Elbourne presents a new body of paintings, produced during the six-month Continuum residency programme at Husk.

These works dwell on a selection of objects, each of which evade straightforward categorisation. Among them are discarded metal canisters, fragments of clay tobacco pipes, burnt out fireworks, the torn remnants of removed posters in Bangladesh, and the partially assembled toy from a Kinder Surprise egg. When speaking of these things he has chosen to paint, Elbourne uses the phrase, 'peripheral objects' to hint at the extent to which we recognise them. We register their presence only at the fringes of our vision and consequently, we assign them no value in day-to-day life. They are things of ambiguous origin; their function or a utility is unclear.

Formally, the paintings are rendered in a cool, objective manner. The framing of the objects is tight, documentative. Some of them are worked from photographs taken in situ; others, with white backgrounds, are like studies of the arrangement of specimens in exhibition cabinets.