'Parlour', selected for Jerwood Contemporary Painters exhibition.

Nick Fox's research addresses a number of questions exploring the boundaries of painting practice both in terms of content and other more formal explorations of material and context.

In ‘Parlour’ (2006), a three-dimensional painting made of a reproduction Edwardian table covered with a ‘tablecloth’ of acrylic paint featuring decoupage and drawing into a support of acrylic paint, figures and coded symbols of flowers are secreted into skins of acrylic paint, which is then folded over selected domestic period furniture (which transmit associated symbolic moral codes), subverting the orthodox narrative of painting and proposing that the painting material and the artefact itself becomes part of the narrative content.

Investigating the slippage between painting and objecthood, while also questioning the value of painting where the specific references of the domestic table could bleed into the reading of the work and sublimate the erotic content of the drawing, the research focused on how material can act as a metaphor for narrative content, conducting specific sets of codes, signs and symbols inherent in both the material of painting and the artefact.

‘Parlour’ (2006) was selected by a panel of subject specialists for the newly launched Jerwood Contemporary Painters. The aim of this nationally recognised exhibition is to promote talent and excellence in the field of painting and to promote a wider discourse in contemporary painting.

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