Dickon Drury: An Egg in Your Shoe
Dickon Drury's hyper-saturated, large-scale paintings render unpopulated interior landscapes packed with accessories of books, computers, kitchenware, opened food, and beverages, reminiscent of a person frantically preparing for an uncertain tomorrow. Unnatural light reflects and refracts from various surfaces and stark shadows create a dynamic interior setting. In his stacked and flattened paintings, the artist reveals a bounty of visual markers that speak to the possible inhabitant. Light casts from open microwaves, brightly lit screens on laptops, and vintage lava lamps highlight an eccentric scene that mimics the occupied mind—one that is active, awake and refuses to remain still. Attempting to make sense of the scene, the viewer ponders what these remnants say about the house guest. Drury’s work speaks to the obsessive nature and anxieties of the day and a desire to control a world that feels chaotic. Through his oil paintings, he bends and skews the domestic space, reinforcing how the night's emptiness amplifies the restlessness of our minds and spaces.
Dickon Drury (Born in 1986 Salisbury, UK; Lives in London, UK) received a BFA in Fine Art Painting at Falmouth College of Art in Cornwall, UK, and in 2016, he received an MFA in Painting at The Slade School of Fine Art in London, UK. Recent solo exhibitions include: If you see me, then weep, Galleri Opdahl, Stavanger, Norway (2023); Time Flies Like an Arrow, Fruit Flies Like a Banana, Kendall Koppe, Glasgow (2021); Dickon Drury, Condo London, Koppe Astner at Carlos Ishikwa, London (2020); To Be The Key, Galleri Opdhal, Stavanger (2019); Art Review Asia Xian Chang section at Westbund, with Koppe Astner, Shanghai (2018); Tennis Elbow, The Journal Gallery, New York (2018); Holed Up, Galleri Opdhal, Stavanger (2018); If The Sea Was Whiskey, Frutta Gallery, Rome (2017); The Who‘s Who of Whos, Koppe Astner, Glasgow (2016); Optics Don‘t Make Marks, Spike Island Project Space, Bristol. Selected group exhibitions include: Midnight Murmurs, Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles (2022); My Kid Could’ve Done That!, The Edge, Bath (2021); Generation Y, Platform Foundation, London (2019); A New Kitchen Sink, Josh Lilley, London (2017).