TOBY PATERSON: EVER GROWING NEVER OLD, LOOPED

27th April – 6th June 2010

 

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EVER GROWING NEVER OLD, LOOPED (2010) is a work by Toby Paterson that was shown for the first time at Pavement. The work marks a temporary departure in form for the artist. More familiar as the maker of paintings, sculpture, reliefs and wall works – the new piece uses film and photography as its medium. EVER GROWING NEVER OLD, LOOPED is a film made from still images which originate from a series of research trips made in Central and Eastern Europe between the Spring of 2006 and the Autumn of 2008.

 

A creative notion of structure and construction is often at the base of Paterson’s work, there is also a clear fascination with modernist architecture and the innumerable forms and variations it takes. As the urban landscape can be transformed by the vision of the artist into an ideal form, this process can also make the viewer more aware of the more ‘real’ state of their surrounding city space. With EVER GROWING NEVER OLD, LOOPED, there is something a little different at work. Presented with an unfolding series of images, there is a sense of the familiar (the fact that architectural forms repeat themselves), but then there is also the way in which certain buildings or spaces catch us short (unfamiliar or awkward forms suddenly intervening to break more comfortable readings). The images in the film allow us to speculate on places without the context of a clear history or identity – it is a realisation of this state which is perhaps crucial in helping to re-think our responses to the urban space which surrounds us.