past exhibition | Rae Hicks: Anomaly | 11 February - 18 April 2021

BBNR gallery is delighted to announce its launch exhibition, Anomaly, an installation of new paintings and sculptures by Rae Hicks.

The exhibition takes the skewed perspectives of lockdown, both personal and societal, as its starting point.

The phenomenon of obscure conspiracy theories maturing into mainstream delusions - and the increasing refusal to recognize hitherto conventional systems - is explored in works which suggest that the sophistication of our immediate and everyday surroundings can render them somehow unreal, and ripe for myth and ignorance.

Rae Hicks completed his MA in Painting at Royal College of Art, and his BA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College London.

He has exhibited widely, and was the youngest prize winner in the John Moores Painting Prize 2014. Solo presentations include The Airbnb (Recent Activity) Fast Dream (CANAL London), Start Art Fair (CANAL/Saatchi Gallery), Three Works (Three Works Weymouth).

Recent projects include Night Swim (Good Naked NY), Material Images (Marvin Gardens NY), All or Nothing (Lungley Gallery London), There’s Something about Painting (Tatjana Pieters Ghent).

"I am interested by a recent return to a kind of primitivism, via the idea of a society which does not recognise itself. As conspiracy theories resurface emboldened and a festering mistrust abounds, so does a suspicion toward the infrastructure that pervades the everyday.

The exhibition includes paintings made between March and July 2020 which mutate the form of ornamental pictures, as well as a series of 'Pylons' made between November 2020 and January 2021. These objects ought to resemble totemic fetishes, which rubbish the enlightenment ideal and make mystical an icon of modernity."

Rae Hicks, February 2021

The exhibition is accompanied by a specially commissioned limited edition artwork, 'Anomaly', please contact the gallery for further information.

Press release and works details

Images: Andy Keate | Max Colson