deborah tarr: the private lives of objects

DEBORAH TARRTHE PRIVATE LIVES OF OBJECTS

Front Cover Detail: Journeyman, assemblage, 122 x 122 cm / 48” x 48”

DEBORAH TARR THE PRIVATE LIVES OF OBJECTS

16th November – 11th December 2010

Gallery hours:Monday-Saturday 10am- 6pm

(or by appointment)

CADOGAN CONTEMPORARY87 Old Brompton Road

London SW7 3LDTelephone: +44 (0)20 7581 5451

Email: info@cadogancontemporary.co.uk

All of the paintings may be viewed on our website:www.cadogancontemporary.com

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF OBJECTS

I’m a big fan of Kurt Schwitters, a great pioneer of the abstract collage. His ambition “to create connections, if possible, between everything in the world”, along with the likes of Joseph Cornell and Robert Rauschenberg were an inspiration for this exhibition.

I’ve always made collages in sketchbooks as a form of drawing and for working out compositions, so this new work explores further the relationship between my painting and that activity. Most exciting has been incorporating the innate nuances and sensual qualities of objects which seem to have a poetry of their own. The joy was to arrange them as these assemblages, thereby strangely giving them a new life beyond the commonplace - a life with new expressive possibilities.

Deborah Tarr

DEBORAH TARR: THE PRIVATE LIVES OF OBJECTS

‘The Private lives of Objects’ exhibits Deborah Tarr’s trademark

abstract oil-paintings alongside a series of her more experimental collages

and assemblages that come together through their celebration of the

sensuous qualities of materials.

Like minimalist objects, her paintings focus on their own materiality.

The oil-paint is alternately scraped back and layered on in thick impasto,

sometimes revealing a lightness of touch, or savaged to reveal the

malleability of the medium. Equally, beautifully subtle nuances of colour

enhance the paint’s properties and accumulated textures. The canvasses

tell the story of their own creation, which is not always smooth but

nevertheless worked to an affirmative resolution. In this way the paintings,

encouraged by their titles, serve to elicit abstract concepts and emotions.

Tarr’s collages and assemblages do not differ as much conceptually from

the paintings as they do visually. Self-referential and abstract, their titles

work to similar effect. In ‘My Place’, a used wooden palette is the main

formal component, whilst the title imbues it with meaning as a signifier of My Place, assemblage,

43 x 33 cm / 17” x 13”

Tarr’s identity, aligning painting with herself and her home. Objects are

treasured not only for their formal characteristics but for the subliminal

emotive qualities they might hold for each individual. Tarr’s creations

elegantly echo the neo-Dada assemblages of the 1950s in America. Made

of ‘found’ objects in the studio, the assemblages are created intuitively

to offset playful relationships of form, texture, colour and presence. A

rusty red piece of tractor on a wooden slab, remnants of stained cloth and

pieces of rubber arranged in apparent disarray animate the canvasses to

become new, autonomous objects that nevertheless have a classical sense

of harmony and balance.

The title ‘Wabi-Sabi’ resonates throughout the whole exhibition. A

Japanese aesthetic concept, it infers a type of flawed beauty that values

change and imperfection and where objects can transcend their materiality

and help us connect better with the world around us. These pieces could

be seen as reassurance of our own existence: they are built of layers and

transitions, restructured and inevitably changed. Importantly for Tarr, they

celebrate the journey of creation and of ‘being’, drawing parallels between the

material qualities of objects, the painted surface and the intangibility of

the metaphysical.

Maxime LongdenSeptember,

oil on canvas,144 x 188 cm / 57” x 74”

Journeyman, assemblage,

122 x 122 cm / 48” x 48”

‘Paintings photographed by John Caruana’

Meet Me on Charlotte Street, collage,

35 x 40 cm / 14” x 16”

Old Flame, mixed media on canvas,122 x 122 cm / 48” x 48”

Pale Blue and Burnt Sienna, Mull, oil on canvas,

81 x 81 cm / 32” x 32”

Marais House, collage,

30 x 38 cm / 12” x 15”

Almost Everything, collage,

66 x 35 cm / 26” x 14”

Emerald Sea, Zennor, oil on canvas,

61 x 61 cm / 24” x 24”

Splendid Peasant, collage,

53 x 71 cm / 21” x 28”

Wabi-Sabi II, oil on canvas,

122 x 122 cm / 48” x 48”

Somewhere Special Sometime, oil on canvas,

122 x 122 cm / 48” x 48”

Mull Coastline, Turquoise Sky, oil on canvas,

81 x 81 cm / 32” x 32”

Attraction, assemblage,

81 x 66 cm / 32” x 26”

Creamy Light, Turquoise Coast, oil on canvas,

81 x 81 cm / 32” x 32”

Haymaker, collage,

58 x 48 cm / 23” x 19”

By the Light of the Silvery Moon, mixed media on canvas,

66 x 55 cm / 26” x 22”

Ardnamurchan, March Afternoon, oil on canvas,

129 x 129 cm / 51” x 51”

Affectionately Yours, assemblage,

86 x 71 cm / 34” x 28”

Pale Sky, Ardnamurchan, oil on canvas,

140 x 140 cm / 55” x 55”

Writhe, assemblage,

76 x 50 cm / 30” x 20”

Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, mixed media,

152 x 152 cm / 60” x 60”

Exactly Like You, collage,

83 x 55 cm / 33” x 22”

Table Talk, oil on canvas,

61 x 71 cm / 24” x 28”

Bold, mixed media,

68 x 38 cm / 27” x 15”

Inside Back Cover

CADOGAN CONTEMPORARY87 Old Brompton Road

London SW7 3LDTelephone: +44 (0)20 7581 5451

Email: info@cadogancontemporary.co.ukwww.cadogancontemporary.com