ROPE-A-DOPE

Saturday 4TH to Saturday 25th May 2024

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Karolina Albricht, Suzy Babington, Danny Cameron, Dan Coombs, Rebecca Gilpin, Scott McCracken, Suzy Willey, Christopher P Wood (curated by Danny Cameron)

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Rope-a-dope is an exhibition of paintings which foregrounds the performative act of making in relation to the complex exchanges between painter and painting. In this arena of painting, thinking on your feet is advised, and tactics of trickery and self-belief must be deployed, alluding to the painting process often feeling combative and risky.

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Many of us seek this shifting territory and the contradictory forces that painting seems to present, to get to something real, a rhythm, in the overlap between genesis and collapse. Sometimes we must follow a course in opposition to norms of construction, by taking the whole thing off – removing paint in pursuit of unity – or locating a final rebellious mark to bring the painting around. Or the painting must be treated disrespectfully, even if this feels difficult, to prevent preciousness in the process and reinstate the work’s potential.

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Similarly, the painting itself can get weary, clogged up or worn out, and taking one layer after another it waits for a timely moment to surprise and neutralise the painter. The painting is part of a ‘canalised’ activity, a deliberate narrowing of ‘reality’, where its interactions with the painter are dissolved into a flowing, albeit antagonistic, metaphysical form of unity.

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Delight in the disorder of the day

Making hay

In the sunshine

Haymaker lands

Slap bang

On the painterly glands

Having gone through several good chins

Artless

Painting wins

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Rope-a-dope opens with a PV on Friday 3rd May (6-9pm) and continues to Saturday 25th May. Open by appointment on Saturdays – email oceansapartgallery@gmail.com or DM on Instagram @oceansapartgallery

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1 Andrew Cranston, Studio Sounds, dir. by Lewis Cranston (Ingleby Gallery, 2020) [Film].
2 Stenner, Paul, ‘Being in the zone and vital subjectivity: On the liminal sources of sport and art’, Culture, Identity and Intense Performativity: Being in the Zone (London: Routledge, 2017), pp10–31.