Liam Stevens, New Work

Liam Stevens presents new work, including five paintings and two limited edition prints. “Painting is a continuous investigation,” Stevens says. “How to paint and what can be achieved is in itself a layering of time, thought and procedure, which runs mutually with the culmination of pigment and repeat washes in producing a work.”

The initial observations that filtered into Stevens’s process for these works arose from a daily connection with Regent’s Canal in London. “The canal is artificial and is fixed in space, architecturally contained within boundaries determined by human-made intervention. In contrast, the flowing body of water and the life it holds is natural, allowing for an ever changing experience,” he says. “It is a moving organic surface of light that takes in from its surroundings, and rhythmically feeds back all it touches, moment after moment.”

The body of work that Stevens developed exists partly in counterpoint to this observation. “It is not intended to be a direct representation of water or substance – it is imagined object and space,” he says. “The areas delineated by straight lines move vertically along a repeating interval, as if they are permitted to flow but must also remain within a determined boundary. This is the most concise observation I feel I can make, and one that I continually discover reflected in the world around me.”

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Liam Stevens's Untitled III, will be exhibited as part of the group show One Foot In The Sky at Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer, curated by Jenn Elis.

The exhibition will be on view from 13 May — 29 July, 2023.