Main Gallery
Jill Mason
Zeros and Tens
11 October – 10 November, 2012
Mason completed her postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools in 2008 and has continued her practice from her London studio, exhibiting in shows selected by Sacha Craddock, Danny Rolph and Saatchi Gallery, as well as featuring in the 2010 edition of Jerwood Contemporary Painters.
We are delighted to present this first solo exhibition of Jill Mason's paintings here at Art First. It includes a momentous group of larger canvases representing an extension from her well-known earlier series of small diaristic panels, whilst similar subject and spatial ambiguities remain central concerns.
Mason writes:
My paintings are awkward and mutable, often appearing to me as makeshift camps. They are temporary home to fading epiphanies where urgent feeling can be forced to bed down next to catatonic indifference.
Historic antecedents are a co-incidental mix of 1930's British surrealism, Philip Guston and US West Coast painting of recent times. The influences appear subliminal as the paintings consistently challenge interpretation. We do not need to treat them as figuration and look for literal narrative but we are guided into a reading under Mason's ambivalent control.
