For his first solo show Barnaby Hosking presents Night Painting (Tarn Hows), a video projection that shows the artist painting a landscape, alone by a lake at night. As the viewer grows accustomed to the darkness, its calm and depth synthesizes with the pace of painting allowing the viewer to become absorbed in the process, observing with the artist the night landscape. This installation brings together both the video and the resulting monochrome paintings.

Other recent works include Surface, in which the artist models in clay the head of a Japanese woman within a darkened studio. A sense of sexual tension exists in the physical distance betwen artist and model. Menacing calipers used to measure the sculpture and model, accentuate the detachment between the making process and the living person observed. The tension between the instruments and the model’s skin reveals the vulnerability of beauty against the forces that attempt to contain or consume it.

Sketches of Darkness takes the form of a video sketchbook which is constantly being added to. This relates to the structure of recurring dreams.  The particular dream sequences that are currently part of the series are re-interpretations of the artist’s own childhood dreams. Like dreams, darkness can exist as an internal experience. The series maintains the free association of images and influences commonly found in one’s sketchbook or in dreams.

Hosking projects his videos onto black velvet screens. This dissolves the pixels of the image and intensifies the blacks to create a richer and more realistic darkness so that the picture plane appears like a void. He presents an ongoing exploration into the subject of darkness, and its possibilities as a sensuous medium and as a trigger for the imagination. He is currently working on a film based on the Japanese tea ceremony.

Black has depth.  It’s like a little egress; you can go into it, and because it keeps on continuing to be dark, the mind kicks in, and a lot of things which are going on in there become manifest.
David Lynch. Interview.

Hosking graduated from the Royal College of Art in July, where he won the following awards: Credit Bank Suisse Prize; and the National Grid Transco Prize. He has shown in the following group shows: A Tiny New Nation, Bowie Art, Spital Square, London; and Cold Stew, VTO Gallery, Bethnal Green, London. He lives and works in London. Special thanks to Adam Sutherland at Grizedale Arts, Cumbria and Tom Kelly.