Various Objects | Aaron Butt

Various Objects | Aaron Butt

3 - 27 July, 2019

Various Objects presents three loose strands of my studio practice; figurative paintings made in response to my research trip to Amsterdam in January this year; works made immediately prior to this trip and to as far as 2014 and non-objective objects from both before and after the trip. While differing greatly in appearance, many of the works engage with notions of transit, and present travel as a methodology in and of itself. The figurative works navigate images that I encountered in books or took or while in Amsterdam, increasingly drawn to the verticality of historic buildings and places of worship.

Works from before the trip proceed these interests in verticality and transit, with subjects such as walking, bungee jumping, high wire and distant memorials. Many of the abstract paintings attempt to embody the idea of transportation through scale, or appropriate the aesthetics of freight, such as cardboard and tape. Bridging all strands is an ongoing interest in and investigation of photography as an ideal bridge between distance places and times.

Presenting these disparate objects together in the gallery without differentiation is an attempt to invite subtle connections and new understandings, while presenting my practice highly consciously as an ongoing cycle of investigation and revisitation.

— Aaron Butt, 2019.