‘High Windows’
Billy Crosby, Bertil Osorio Heltoft, Jessie Whiteley, Kenneth Winterschladen
Curated by Ted Targett
7 October – 5 November 2022
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
(Excerpt from High Windows, Philip Larkin)
Across this quartet of paintings, we witness something of Larkin’s endless nowhere. Each composition looms as if from far above our windowsills, out of reach – worlds where the lands and skies seem beyond recognition. All painted in hues of ocean blue and forest green, you’ll notice forms that converge, before dissipating into spectral, painterly trails. Emerald light masks every surface, as if cast behind a momentary green ray at sunset. Illustrative mark-making magnifies characters who roam across wide vistas.
Billy Crosby, Bertil Osorio Heltoft, Jessie Whiteley and Kenneth Winterschladen each suspend the ingredients of our universe into distinctly differing scenes. In Billy’s, nine owls hover as if beaming behind glass, foregrounded by ever-entwining branches in a forest glittering at dusk. In Bertil’s, two alien-like figures stare longingly at either end of a distant twinkling star, both rising high above the clouds beyond a barely perceptible earth in the distance. Jessie’s dance scene is plucked as if from a dream, taking place under mottled parti-colour, the protagonists gossiping and mingling in numerous subplots. And in Kenneth’s, an obscured atlas is turned on its side revealing an inquisitive bird, as arrays of metallic grommets and wooden spheres orbit the goings-on. Four glimpses through high windows into the imaginations of others, yet, painted with such conviction they have you questioning reality itself.