NIGEL MULLINS | Morpheus Constructs

NIGEL MULLINS 

Morpheus Constructs

05 April – 03 May 2025 | Everard Read at Leeu Estates

Everard Read Franschhoek is proud to present Morpheus Constructs, a new solo exhibition by Nigel Mullins. 

Opening Reception: Saturday 5th of April @ 11AM

To be added to the catalogue waiting list, please click HERE.

"I started this show with the idea of finally making a completely abstract exhibition. My practice has involved abstract works for some time, but they always sat within figurative exhibitions. The colours often referenced a figurative starting point - such as the rose windows of Notre-Dame in Paris, military colours, or the flags of the United Nations. This time however, l started with only the colour harmonies and the shape, and the size and thickness of the marks in mind. Each paint mark had to have its own satisfying play of colours. This repetitive process, while often pleasurable, was surprisingly un-meditative, and even exasperating, requiring a relentless critical approach. Each painterly event had to be interesting in itself. It had to be unique but make sense within a composition yet to be determined. As each canvas filled up, they became extremely difficult puzzles to solve by intuition and experience alone. I found myself a crazed subject to my own murky and often contradictory aesthetic urges. 

I have never been able to stay within the bounds of conceptual clarity - I constantly break my own rules and disrupt simple ideas. It was not long into the process that l realised my medieval stone studio had become central to my show. The stonework, the centuries of repairs and changes of function, the blocked-in doors and windows, the birds and animals living in the crevices, the sedimentary layers exposed, the chiselled rock face, the view of the river, the windows letting in light, the reflection of past lives occupying the space. My painting process had begun to mimic the construction of my studio. With this in mind, I allowed myself to refer directly to architectural features that drew my interest from the area in which I live. I liked the visual signs of history piling up on itself in unusual configurations, my studio had become a lens through which l was seeing things, and my mind or creative engine, had expanded to hold its structure.

My intention had been a "simple" exploration of colour and composition generated through accrual, which I interpreted as a positive visual metaphor for human endeavour in the most general sense. The act of compiling a series of colours and marks on a canvas could be seen as a minimalist meditation on the nature of human constructs, both physical and social. The paintings, like culture, are the result of the accrual of choices - order, chaos and chance. Everything is evolutionary, with one thing leading to another in a fractal web of cause and effect.

While this is still valid, in retrospect, l see that the works are a rich tumult open to much wider interpretation, as seen in Georgie Shields’ response stating “it holds the whole world...dreams and hallucinations, mental maps, circuit boards, cellular biology, viscera, connective tissue, connecting systems, soaring aerial and immersive microscopic perspectives, architecture, the Pompidou, Rorschach’s… the infinite and meandering rivers of life…”

Then there is Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. He was an unexpected arrival in the process, but one who brought it to its conclusion. This ancient bronze head seemed to be some kind of witness, or even the source of the dream like images. Dreams - like these works - are not real… Shifting, perplexing, we project our thoughts and feelings onto them, yet they remain elusive to simple explanation."

- Statement by Nigel Mullins

EVERARD READ AT LEEU ESTATES
Dassenberg Rd, Franschhoek, 7690
+27 21 876 2446 l fgallery@everard.co.za

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 10:00 - 17:00
Please contact us to make an appointment outside of these hours.