Urban Impression
1st June - 29th June 2008
Paintings by Tony Noble and Tim Morrison with new pots by Michael Kay

Tony Noble 'Stone Dog' - 60x75cm Oil on Canvas

Tony Noble:
Tony Noble has for many years made paintings of buildings, the buildings of Batley his home town. The actual buildings, many of them Victorian have a solid post-industrial presence, Tony's depictions of them seem to me more nuanced. The paintings suggest other narratives particularly the recent ones with their low late afternoon light, long shadows and warm tones. They suggest the passage of time with a ‘Hopperesque' melancholy, the streets are empty even in the reflected windows, the day is at an end and yet the buildings look glorious, like confections. He seems to me to be both celebrating the survival of these imposing classical edifices in their unlikely setting and simultaneously mourning the passage of time.

Recently the lace-like intricacy of scaffolding and shadows has joined the solid logical structures of stone and mortar, we seem to have moved from the known to the half understood. Where does the scaffolding end and the shadows begin? This fragile interplay of light with its delicate balancing of positive and negative shapes implies a more ambiguous world, one in which familiar buildings are seen afresh as light remakes them. This is also a world in which old garages stand stoically against the elements almost heroic in their daily survival. It is also a world where puddles and wasteland deserve to be recorded in all their understated tones and delicate scumbled half colours. It is this humble reality of the familiar, the half remembered, corner of the eye, neglected view that Tony has so wonderfully made his own. He captures beautifully that difficult double act of both commemorating the streets and scenes of his town whilst also proposing a serious and subtle discourse on transience.
(Tom Wood, 2008.)

Tim Morrison

Tim Morrison
Tim Morrison was born in South London and studies at Edinburgh University and the Royal College of Art.

His work celebrates the City as the 'Urban Stage' on which we live out the theatre of our lives. His paintings and pastel drawings hint at the neon bright colour of the hoardings and the baroque grandeur of the surrounding architecture as figures dash across the surfaces in a riot of activity and a flurrly of lines.

In addition to his home town of York Tim has included recent work from a trip to Amsterdam.

Tim has exhibited extensively including the Royal Acadamy Summer Shows, Glasgow printmakers workshop, The Cheltenham Drawinf Biennale, The Clyaton Gallery Newcastle, and Minster Fine Art.

Michael Kay 'Europa'

Michael Kay:
Michael Kay was born in London. He graduated from Willesden College of Art with a degree in Painting and Printmaking.

It was only after spending many years working as a Graphic Designer, and running his own design studio, that in the early 90’s he discovered the medium of clay. He was immediately hooked and in 1992-3 he undertook a one year Post-Graduate Course in ceramics at Goldsmith’s.

In 1994 after graduation from Goldsmiths he moved to South West France where he and his wife Sue set about renovating an old farmhouse and built a studio.

“I work on the edge of the potter's craft and consider myself rather as a painter or illustrator of three dimensional objects whereby the surface of the pot is my canvas.

I am strongly influenced by past traditions, but at the same time am constantly trying to break away from them and to find new ways of telling old stories. I want to cross traditional boundaries in the presentation of the ceramic form whilst using it to engage the onlooker in a narrative or fantasy, much the same way as those masters of story-telling, the ancient greeks.

I want to push the boundaries and question the accepted perception of what is a pot?

The surface of a ceramic vessel is a powerful and expressive vehicle with which to fuse the various disciplines of painting, sculpture and storytelling into a powerful language of its own”.