Nick Fox: New Paintings and Unveiled

This two-site exhibition enabled Fox to present a new body of work and to make a site-specific installation for the Museum of Contemporary Art, London. The programme within which Fox was selected to exhibit aims to couple younger artists with historical or established artists, in this instance Fox’s work was presented in counterpoint with Picabia’s ‘Femmee aux Perles’, and enabled comparison between the hetero-erotic content of Picabia and the homo-erotic of Fox’s imagery.

The exhibition represented Fox’s concerns with eroticism and desire, using contemporary notions of the historical Arcadian narrative painting as the platform for this body of work. Moving away from the more literally phallic imagery that had been the focus of his work in the previous two years, these paintings investigated how a more subtle use of imagery could amplify the eroticism suggested in the painting. Referencing historical narrative painting, Victorian photography and other more contemporary erotic outputs this work explores a decorative painterly tradition and investigates how the more familiar platform of everyday domestic objects can be read in relation to more traditional two-dimensional painting. These three-dimensional ‘paintings’ are made of reproduction Edwardian tables covered with a ‘tablecloth’ of acrylic paint featuring decoupage and drawn and painted surfaces. Further pieces made for the show were ‘Tableau’, an 18ft long single skin of paint, made directly for the space. This site-specific piece drew parallels with Picabia’s work by duplicating the seductive surface patination and mirrored its narrative content while investigating connecting decorative codes and symbols.

Funded by the Royal Academy of Arts, MOCA London, St James Homes and Futurecity, this exhibition has resulted in initial discussions with The Michaelis Collection, Cape Town (The National Gallery of South Africa) in developing a body of work in response to their permanent Flemish collection.