DAMIEN FLOOD

DIG

Damien Flood Design for a Living Room

Oil on reversed black-primed canvas with 22 carat gold leaf

156 x 131 cm 2022

21 October - 27 November 2022

Damien Flood Conversation room

Oil on canvas

156 x 131 cm 2022

Damien Flood Blind Plant

Oil on canvas

42 x 36 cm 2022

Damien Flood Evening Sand

Single edition coil-wound earthenware vase with oil paint

17 x 14 x 14 cm 2021

Life and death are also intertwined.

These kinds of leaps and transformations are at the heart of Flood’s art. As a title, Dig suggests a deathly or macabre action. And mortality is never far from Flood’s brush. But dig is necessary to grow and his oil on canvases are teeming with abundant life. Even his “ indoor “ Design for a Living Room ( 2022 ) ( oil on reversed black-primed canvas with 22 carat gold leaf ) is full of atmosphere, passing clouds or ice-caps, and a chair sprouting green life, all defying an easy definition or understanding of these works.

His series of richly glazed ceramic heads and popular Grinners hit home harder. They confront the viewer in shiny, unsettling detail with uncomfortable truths about the facts of death and decay. Their material and their form also rhyme with the idea of excavation and digging down through the layers of time compressed beneath the surface, to the ruins of past lives.

This is an exhibition for our times, making us wonder just how much we have progressed and how much – or little – life has changed. The use of fired clay already suggests something classical and pre-historic and funerary. His painted landscapes are vivid interior dream worlds posing more questions than answers. The viewer has to dig deep.

You dig deep, you plant deep.

A dig is also a goad to the viewer, a wound and a provocation. This exhibition will not leave you unmoved but provoke a gut response to Flood’s new, visceral, sights and sounds.

Accompanying the show is a three-track vinyl record in an edition of 30 called For After Ever. Each track is written, composed and performed by GUT ( Damien Flood ). It is lathe-cut and available for purchase at the gallery.

This exhibition will be followed by a group exhibition of new and longer established gallery artists called New Horizons, opening December 2 2022 – Jan 29 2023.

Damien Flood Former Night

Single edition coil-wound earthenware vase with oil paint

17 x 14 x 14 cm 2021

Damien Flood Sea Swimmer

Oil on canvas

56 x 46 cm 2022

Damien Flood Lament

Oil on canvas

156 x 131 cm 2022

Damien Flood Grinner Pay no Heed

Single edition glazed earthenware sculpture with 22-carat gold leaf teeth

14 x 12 x 12 cm 2019

Damien Flood Grinner Momento

Single edition glazed earthenware sculpture with 22-carat gold leaf teeth

14 x 12 x 12 cm 2019

Damien Flood Grinner Brother

Single edition glazed earthenware sculpture with 22-carat gold leaf teeth

14 x 12 x 12 cm 2019

Damien Flood Hanging Garden

Oil on linen with ceramic leaves and moss

180 x 140 cm 2022

Green On Red Gallery is excited to announce an exhibition of new paintings, ceramics and a new limited edition vinyl, For After Ever, by Damien Flood in its Spencer Dock gallery, opening on Thursday, October 20 next and running until November 27, 2022.

Flood continues to make paintings and ceramic works that are seen separately and, in the case of Hanging Garden ( 2022 ), where one medium seems to grow out of or is enmeshed with the other. We are more used to this cross-fertilization with architectural embellishment, like the shrouded life-size sculpted figure in the Pére Lachaise cemetery, Paris ( illustrated in Flood’s 2018 book The Figure in the Carpet – Damien Flood : p.2 ). In Hanging Garden ( oil on linen, ceramic and moss ) sculpture grows out of painting. In Evening Sand ( 2022 ) a live clematis climbs through a trellis-like plinth that supports a landscape hand-painted on a round unique ceramic vase