The Abject Object

A group exhibition curated by Geraint Evans that explores contemporary painterly representations of objects with reference to the still life tradition and with a particular interest in the notion of thingness and abjection. The starting point is Norman Bryson’s description of still life as “…an object world that has dispensed with human attention and in a sense makes human attention and the human subject obsolete.” The exhibition is concerned with the ways in which paint’s materiality resonates with meaning and articulates the relationship between subject and object, the observer and the observed. Artists include: Sophie Birch, G L Brierley, Simon Callery, Mark Fairnington, Ana Genovés, John Greenwood, Paul Housley, Damien Meade and Donal Moloney. Panel discussion: was held on Thursday 12 May 4.30-6.30pm in the lecture theatre at Wimbledon College of Arts to discuss and debate the issues raised by the exhibition. Participants included curator Geraint Evans, Course Leader for MA Painting at Wimbledon; Mark Fairnington, participating artist and Reader in Painting CCW; Frances Woodley, artist, academic and curator of exhibitions ‘All Coherence Gone? Historical currents in contemporary still life’ 2014 and ‘Still Life: Ambiguous Practices’ 2015; Dr Fiona Candlin, Senior Lecturer in Museum Studies at Birkbeck University of London and co-author of ‘The Object Reader’ and painter Damien Meade, recent exhibitor in the London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, London 2015