Naomi Frears: Night After Night
7 September - 2 November 2024
Our final show of the 2024 season is Naomi Frears: Night After Night – New paintings and works on paper.
This is the third exhibition by Naomi Frears at Kestle Barton. The previous two shows foregrounded her work with film. This time we are presenting new paintings and works on paper made for Kestle Barton. A small selection of her films will also be shown in the Apple Store, upstairs and opposite the main gallery.
Frears is based in the Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, Cornwall. Her practice includes work with film and video, as well as printmaking, painting, and collaborative curatorial projects. Frears says of making the work for this show:
Alongside work with film and video and other projects I’ve always made work with my hands – printmaking, drawing and painting. It still feels like an important way for me to think and see. John Constable said, painting was ‘another word for feeling’ and that makes sense to me.
In my studio, I work for years on each canvas, obeying urges by introducing new images or ideas – or going back in time, undoing what’s there and finding previous images buried by layers of paint.
I love not knowing where a painting is going. I think all artists have their peculiarities and this is mine. If there’s a chance for something surprising to happen, that’s the way I’ll go – I’ll change everything. Sometimes, however, a painting pauses – often for quite a long time – as I try to work out how to solve the visual problem I’ve made.
For this show, I decided that I’d address the paused paintings – revisit these stuck works and unstick them. It’s been a bit like untying a difficult knot and then tying a new one. I’ve been happy taking the paintings back to a state of nakedness and heading off in another direction in order to find out what’s possible.
Sometimes the upheaval is visible and sometimes it’s under the surface. Some of the paintings in this show are quiet and still, but I know where they’ve been.
In these works, there are figures – watching, lazing in suits, sleeping – imagined landscapes, plants, and trees, a hotel room, pattern, structures, a mountain.
The show is called Night After Night. I have insomnia and during the night, without my permission, in my wakeful state, I’m taken to my studio where I look at and work on my paintings. This is annoying.
The new paintings and works on paper in this show are the result of these explorations both in the studio and in my head night after night.
