EDITIONS : Bi Products 2003-2009

For over six years Alexis Harding used the covers of a 2003 catalogue of his work as drawing boards and depositories for the bi-product of his studio practice.

Numbering 120 at the outset, these studies will be installed on a single wall at Rubicon Gallery this month. Collectively they act as companions to paintings made subsequently, and they provide a unique insight into Harding’s thoughts and working processes.

In the beginning, the catalogue covers were grounds for repeated actions such as the sieving of paint from failed paintings and cleaning the brush. Over time, a visual language evolved describing the real-time of the studio, the attempt to give an order to its disorganisation and to its Modernist residue.

Recurrent motifs create a schematic illusionism – paintballs, towerblocks, Islands, horizon lines, paint detritus, days of the week, paint boulders, anthropomorphous perching gestures, paint growths, heads, neglected aerial vegetation, paint excavation, signposts.