Paul Williams

18 August - 6 September 2017

In this new installation Paul Williams recreates a corner of his studio space by painting the plaid wallpaper pattern from his studio interior directly onto the walls of the LS2 gallery. The new works on paper, canvas and wood panel made for the exhibition are hung directly onto the painted surface. This fluid exchange and merging of space, time, place and object has been a constant in Williams’ practice, where the source material for his work has been both the physical confines of his studio space and the photographic archive of architectural features and landscapes collected over many years. 

In this new site, the gallery space, there is a sense of nostalgia and a symbolic search for touchdown as interior studio merges with exterior landscape to form an unlikely narrative. Spatial and relational recognition meets the need to have contact with materials, memory and movement in a singular location. 

What occurs when one works from photographs as well as responding to real time and place? What is the relationship between a once photographed house in Norway and the studio space the artist works in? How great is the gap between these two sources? Could it be that time and memory ceases to be linear? 

In this exhibition, Williams is responding to such questions. Objects, places and memories are thrown into orbit, finding ground in a newly formed spatial context. Are we in the gallery space or transported to the artists studio? Beyond this, are we able to reach back in time to the original site of inspiration, a train carriage crossing distant lands with a view of trees and distant houses?