Ingleby’s Autumn programme kicks off with an exhibition which pairs an American painter from a quiet corner of rural New Jersey, with an English sculptor who divides his time between a basement studio in inner-city London and a cabin in the German countryside. Despite the distance between them and their very different mediums, they share an approach that cherishes the overlooked, and the integrity of an object made lovingly by hand.
JOHN JOSEPH MITCHELL
John Joseph Mitchell’s (b.1989, Somers Point, New Jersey) small scale paintings tell a visual tale of the New Jersey landscape and the people with whom he shares a rural community near the Tuckahoe River. Fragments of nature - shifting light, a passing bird, a solitary tree, are balanced by and moments of domestic contemplation. A bowl of tomatoes, a favourite chair, the stillness of a room. His wooden panels are painstakingly hand-made, sanded, stained and primed, and set within a hand-painted frame – the process of preparation, almost as a ritual in itself.
JOEL TOMLIN
Joel Tomlin’s (b.1969, Sheffield, UK) studio is a place of files and chisels, axes, hand saws and pliers, there are no power tools. Every mark and shaving, every cut and carve is made by hand. Slowly, and with love. Wooden sculptures jostle for space on crowded surfaces, lumps of timber gathered from the streets line the floors, and everywhere there are tiny objects made from discarded off cuts of wood and tin. Some of Tomlin’s sculptures have what he describes as ‘conversational attributes’, a sense of one work communicating with another, or relationships building between things. It encourages an anthropomorphic reading, especially when the objects are gathered in groups. It seems inconceivable that some sort of life doesn’t continue when the studio door is locked at night.
