Press-gang is a solo exhibition featuring recent artworks by Luke Burton, current Artist-in residence at Eltham College.
The show brings together paintings, collage, vitreous enamels, and sculpture that explore the experiences of play, pressure, anger, and release. This work also expands on Burton’s interest in the decorative as a mediator between the political and aesthetic spheres.
Burton has used the exhibition as an opportunity to reflect on the specific circumstances of the residency and the idiosyncratic nature of working within a school and the role of the artist ‘in-resident’ when, in fact, Burton lives in Westminster and commutes to the college in the outskirts of London by train. This reversal of the traditional commute prompted questions around the nature of access to and from the city itself as well as to questions around housing and work security.
The exhibition title, Press-gang, conveys Burton’s interest in wordplay and how the mutability of language can suggest layers of meaning. We see this with the use of crosswords, a trope that runs through the exhibition and serves as a metaphor for the relationship between language and art, blending abstract, geometric, and decorative forms to communicate a coded visual language. The title Press-gang itself refers to the historical practice of impressment, whereby men were forcibly conscripted into the navy or army via physical and verbal intimidation. The title also conjures up ideas around the national media or ‘press’ and points to the literal flower press in the exhibition, which is used as both a tool and artwork. Another reference is to the erstwhile Children’s TV programme, Press Gang, in which a group of teenagers run a print newspaper every day before school. The term, then, evokes a heady mix of military history, violence and bullying behaviour, Victorian floral decorative practices, and children being given the agency to ‘play’ at being adults within a school environment. A series of portraits of male senior civil servants also act as a kind of gang, peering out, often disembodied and floating, from the colour-field grounds of the paintings.
An enormous painting of a lanyard points to the disproportionate importance of these handheld objects in work culture, whilst making a comically literal blockade within the gallery space.
Lanyards, before their ubiquity as an object and symbol of institutional, state and corporate security, were traditionally a length of (frequently decorated) strapping that attached a sword or pistol to its owner.
Press-gang corrals a diverse range of cultural and historical references into a discussion on play – both in language, in education, and the political dimensions of taking play seriously or as is frequently the case, not seriously enough.
Luke Burton (b. 1983, London) studied at Chelsea College of Art and Design, BA, London (2002 – 2005) and MA at the Royal College of Art, London (2011-2013).
Gerald Moore Gallery, Mottingham Lane, London, SE9 4RW from 22nd April – 18th May 2024 with the private view on Thursday 25th April, 6 – 8pm.
The gallery is open to the public every Saturday 10am – 4pm or by appointment.
