Justin Mortimer: It Is Here

This is British painter Justin Mortimer’s second exhibition with the gallery. Mortimer is widely regarded as one of the leading figurative painters working today and an emblematic figure for a younger generation of artists. Mortimer is an artist who has consistently pursued a particular vision and way of working independently of the vagaries of fashion.

Justin Mortimer’s paintings address the present moment. They reflect upon a world in a state of disorder and respond to recent events in the US, Calais, the Ukraine, West Africa, Syria and Afghanistan. The paintings combine imagery sourced from the internet with archival material from old books and magazines in order to visualise a world in which nothing is stable or certain, echoing the tectonic cracks appearing in the old world order.

It Is Here (2016), the large painting that gives the exhibition its title, epitomizes Mortimer’s ambiguous approach to his subject matter. A number of new works contain abstract elements, richly coloured striations, which are derived from found images of cracked plasma screens.