art update

Piers Secunda: A Retrospective

February 6, 2013
Press

Piers Secunda’s solo exhibition at Uptown Gallery was featured in Art Update.

‘Piers Secunda: A Retrospective’ covers a decade of the development of this highly unusual studio practice, in which paint becomes a sculptural material.For sixteen years Piers has pushed paint into a sculptural realm, removing it from the traditional support of the canvas and “Taking it for a walk” in the words of Paul Klee. The results are several series of works, which have developed into complex blends of modernism and politics using increasingly advanced technical skills. One of the centre pieces of the exhibition will be the “Painting of a Chinese Puzzle Ball” a sixteen layer ball, measuring eight centimeters across (see the photograph above to the left) which is made entirely out of paint. Embedded here is a two minute film about this work, featuring an interview with Julia Hutt, Curator of the V&A’s Asian Department:

The Shot Works
The exhibition will also include the most recent shot works, made with the help of Jamaicas biggest drug king pin and top gang leader, last June. These will be accompanied by two other groups of works from the series which date back several years, and which have been shot by the Chinese Army (PLA) in 2009 or which contain Taliban bullet holes, moulded from suicide bomb attack sites in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2010. The short, recently completed ‘Jamaican Bullet Holes” documentary film can be found here:

The Crude Oil Prints
Also featuring prominently in the exhibition will be the crude oil works. In 2009 Piers Secunda started to produce prints using crude oil. These works have devolped into a long running project which will catalogue the petro-chemical age in pictures, using crude oils which are relevant to the images portrayed. The image below shows the famous
Dammam Number 7 oil well in Saudi Arabia striking oil in 1937. This was the first oil discovery in the middle east, and it shifted the balance of politics and economics permanently. The brown colour on the surface of the work is crude oil from the Dammam Number 7 well.