A group exhibition curated by artist Dan Coombs bringing together works by 13 contemporary painters working with indirect and ambiguous narrative.
The exhibition title takes inspiration from the 1941 Hitchcock film of the same name and Coombs is interested in film as an arena for the development of ways of approaching narrative, especially during period where this was not visible in painting practice.
In this collection of new work implied narratives intensify the ambiguity of the paintings, lifting them out of the literal into something more like a memory, a dream or a confession. The works offer a surreal quality with hidden symbols and suspended meanings. Stories hide within them, either through a reference to film or photographic image, or through a collage of discombobulated elements that build into an overall structure, tantalisingly ambiguous, without a beginning or resolution.
Jerwood Encounters are one-off curated exhibitions which provide artists and curators with new exhibition opportunities and the chance to explore issues and territories in the borderlands between the main disciplinary fields of the Jerwood Visual Arts programme. They were first established in 2009.
