Alastair Gordon & Hugh Mendes

A collaborative project between Alastair Gordon and Hugh Mendes programmed to coincide with Dominic Shepherd’s solo exhibition ‘Old England’,

Gordon and Mendes share an interest in trompe l’oeil painting and in the representation of other people’s work within their own. For this unique project, they will produce a series of diptychs relating to recently deceased British artists. This will consist in each case of two paintings: a panel painting by Alastair Gordon representing an artist’s studio wall, replete with paint smears and other consequential marks. Adjacent to this Hugh Mendes will present an obituary painting featuring a rendition of a self-portrait by the deceased artist.

The common factor is the use of paint to represent paint, either as left over detritus from the act of making, or in the depiction of an appropriated painting. This serves to investigate representation in itself, whilst simultaneously paying homage to the artist and their working practice.

As the first occasion in an ongoing project, Gordon and Mendes will present diptychs memorialising Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Craigie Aitchison and Michael Andrews.