Flat Volume : APT Gallery

Flat Volume, opening on the 23rd October at APT Gallery will be a survey exhibition of 41 pieces of work from 38 artists aimed at contextualising ‘Flat Volume’ and its concept within contemporary painting, with reference to Paul Nash’s ‘Equivalents for the Megaliths’ 1935 and Phyllida Barlow’s wealth of ‘coloured drawings’.

In a time where we can be increasingly consumed by screens, the remit of the exhibition is to highlight and absorb the physical forms and objects we are surrounded by, and our own relationships to our physical haptic environments; how we deal with the importance of ‘object-ness’ and question the values of form through painting.

‘This selection of national and international artists all interrelate by their enduring preoccupation with how volume is conjured, achieved and explored through varieties of strategies, instincts and processes. 

These include: 
1. Placement of Parts:  Absolute idiosyncratic specificity of placement. 
2. Object(ness)/Form: Desire for ‘solid’ forms – within the picture plane – alongside a pull to unusual structures. 
3. Relief – concave/convex: The melding boundaries of painting and sculpture. 
4. Illusion of form or relief.

These works bring to the forefront object/non-objects and in doing so enhance our attention upon the visual fundamentals but through slow(ed) viewing – within the dynamic ‘lived’ and arresting moments of the painting – which allows us to view and interrogate material culture and value systems; our relationship to them and ideally more consciously acknowledge them, however beguiling.’
– curator Sarah Longworth-West

Supported by Norwich University of the Arts