Long & Ryle is delighted to present Palette, a solo exhibition of new works by British artist John Monks (b. 1954, Manchester), opening on 23 October 2024 until 10 January 2025. John Monks is ‘one of the most important painters working in Britain today’ (The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham) with works in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Yale Centre for British Art in New Haven; CAS; Arts Council Collection; The V&A; Manchester City Art Galleries; Santa Barbara Museum, California and The Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon.
John Monks lives and works between the UK and France. His new collection of paintings were completed over the last two years between his two studios in Clapham, London and Northern France: both formerly abandoned sites steeped in history. Monks is drawn to the atmosphere that surrounds these historic landscapes, channelling the enigmatic energy of an inaccessible past through his layered pigments that patinate the surface of his interiors. These imaginary spaces do not imply reality, but build upon Monks’ experience of the world to construct a stage on which he is participant, not viewer. Working without a preconceived plan, Monks paints in pursuit of an image that sometimes shines out, and other times is lost in the shadows, capturing his evolving process on the canvas. This approach not only conveys a profound sense of time but also reflects the importance he places on the journey rather than the final result.
Monks frequently returns to the subject of monumental architectural spaces to encompass the binaries of past and present, light and dark, decadence and dilapidation. Fragmenting the traditional tropes of form and reconstructing them through rays of light that fracture in his interiors, Monks’ paintings become portraits of abandoned rooms filled with whispers of the past.
For his upcoming solo exhibition at Long and Ryle, Monks is presenting 8 new oil paintings, a selection of interiors and landscapes that expand upon his exploration of time as static movement, employing the light and shadow of emotion to paint the unseen. Says Monks, “For me painting is a medium that allows me to create an image I try to inhabit. My paintings don't have a direct narrative. They are a journal of my life, a visual and emotional response to the world around me.”
Palette is on view from 24 October to 10 January 2025 at Long & Ryle, John Islip Street, London.
