Installation view, Steel your face right off your head, 2020
Liam Everett
Steel your face right off your head
September 3 – October 17, 2020
Informed by theatre, dance and choreography, Liam Everett’s heavily layered paintings are the result of an embodied, performative and material approach. In his studio, Everett sets up physical obstacles such as wooden poles, metal grids or trestles between himself and the surface of the substrate to raise his body’s awareness in the process of mark making.
Untitled (truth breaks, moist and green)
Liam Everett
2020


ink, oil, acrylic, sand, alcohol on linen 200 x 160 cm Ref. 4076
Untitled (Madame sort)
Liam Everett
2020


ink, oil, acrylic, sand, alcohol on linen Ref. 4077
Liam Everett, Untitled (Madame sort) – detail, 2020
Untitled (ear of grain/twice return)
Liam Everett
2020


ink, oil, acrylic, sand, alcohol on linen 200 x 160 cm Ref. 4078
Untitled (fierce pursuit becomes routine)
Liam Everett
2020


ink, oil, acrylic, sand, alcohol on linen 200 x 160 cm Ref. 4079
Installation view, Steel your face right off your head, 2020
For Everett, the studio becomes akin to a stage where he moves around and creates temporary props and situations that all take part in the making of the work. In turns, his abstract and energetic paintings seem to oscillate between their ontic and indexical nature; between their state as the by-products of a set of performative reactions, and the naturally autonomous inclination of abstraction. This in-betweenness forces his paintings to remain in a perpetually provisional state, questioning traditional notions of composition and “aesthetic finish”.
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand
Liam Everett
2020
archival vinyl film variable dimensions (in situ) Ref. 4114
Liam Everett, Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand – detail, 2020
Untitled (to read the etched rays)
Liam Everett
2020


ink, oil, acrylic, sand, alcohol on linen 150 x 98 cm Ref. 4081
Untitled (her metal shoulder)
Liam Everett
2020


ink, oil, acrylic, sand, alcohol on linen 150 x 98 cm Ref. 4082
Untitled (from window to closed window)
Liam Everett
2020


ink, oil, acrylic, sand, alcohol on linen 150 x 98 cm Ref. 4083
Installation view, Steel your face right of your head, 2020
Untitled (and she springs toward her den)
Liam Everett
2020


ink, oil, acrylic, sand, alcohol on linen 190 x 141 cm Ref. 4084
Untitled (from the field)
Liam Everett
2020


ink, oil, acrylic, sand, alcohol on linen 190 x 141 cm Ref. 4085
In her essays on Horizontality in the catalogue for the exhibition Formless: A User’s Guide (1996), Rosalind Krauss refers to the idea of spatial mapping while defining the operation by which the floor became a production site. Liam Everett approaches the floor as such a site and subsequently as a system of support for the picture plane, which entails a larger cultural shift in how one considers the role of form, its relationship to the body, and to our perceptual apparatus.
Liam Everett, Untitled (talking turning heads) – detail, 2020
Untitled (talking turning heads)
Liam Everett
2020


ink, oil, acrylic, sand, alcohol on linen 249 x 200 cm Ref. 4086
Untitled (as you played and so we sang)
Liam Everett
2020


ink, oil, acrylic, sand, alcohol on linen 195 x 240 cm Ref. 4087