For the inaugural exhibition in their new Fitzrovia gallery, Brooke Benington will bring together sculptor Jesse Pollock and painter Ross Taylor for the dialogue exhibition By the Skin of Our Teeth. Introduced by the gallery, the two artists have discovered areas of commonality and contrast that they have focused on as they have worked in parallel developing the exhibition. There is a duality, a push-and-pull, that both artists explore, layering and peeling back, cutting and stitching together material and meaning.
The title By the Skin of Our Teeth emerged from discussions between the two artists. Pollock’s practice to this point has used objects and motifs of England’s pastoral past to examine conflicted feelings of patriotism and national identity. Living and working in rural Kent, Pollock has seen how culturally and socially these ideas have become more divisive. When embarking on this new body of works, he was concerned with a sense of careering onward motion, hurtling towards a tipping point. He talks about reaching a stage when our humanity is stripped away and we revert to our base selves, without guile and wit, language and tools - the inner animal is exposed and we once again have to scrabble and scrape and fight tooth and nail for everything we have.
Taylor in turn enjoyed the reference to the mouth, teeth, and to gestation. He describes sometimes seeing his studio as a stomach, a swilling and churning dual sphere of production and consumption where all that enters is incessantly gnawed, singed and regurgitated. His paintings emerge over several years through a process of painting and overpainting, stripping back and repairing and reworking until the final iteration rises to the surface. Sometimes abstract, sometimes bearing reference to figures or forms, internalised fictions rise and external influence seeps in.
The exhibition spans the two rooms of the gallery with each artist controlling the domain of one space while allowing the other to infiltrate and intermingle. In this way, we are invited to consider their works in isolation and in conversation. Each artist has also prepared an accompanying text that, in their differing styles, mirrors their approach to their work and exhibition making. Pollock's raw, direct and earthy poeticism and Taylor's layered and laboured linguistic revelry.
