FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE STUDIO

NEW WORKS BY TOM CRAWFORD

PRESS RELEASE

Working Rooms is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Tom Crawford. The exhibition will focus on Crawford’s investigation into the role and process of painting. Influenced by the supporting ephemera and debris from the process of painting, the show will consist of objects and paintings considering the empirical aspects of producing art within the environment of it’s labour. The accidental and secondary traces of the creative act have become the focus to instead find significance in chance and the seemingly inconsequential. By negating praxis, the intended meaning behind the act, Crawford prompts the viewer to reconsider the act of painting as a means.

The works both signify and are instigated by materials and studio routine. By enquiring into the process valuing means over ends, Crawford endeavours to ask the questions, what is painting, who is it for and why do it now? Though sceptical about the role painting has to play today, Crawford seems to suggest that the very lack of purpose salvages the worth out of the futility of this tradition. It perhaps isn’t what or why a person decides to paint but the very fact that they do that remains philosophically intriguing. To depict, perform technique, investigate colour or to daub on broken plates has left painting, partly due to its market position, at a regressive point now at the beginning of the 21st century. When everything has been done and redone we are left with the act itself.