Tom Humphreys

Rob Tufnell presents a series of new paintings by Tom Humphreys.

Humphreys’ recent paintings all use a generic greyboard as their support. Such board is usually employed as an acid-free backing within conservation frames or for dry-mounting. As such these works are in some sense inside-out. Humphreys uses the board as a neutral surface with which to explore what a painting can be in terms of colour, form and representation.

Humphreys was first trained as a sculptor and these works are as much constructed as painted, concerned more with their material than with what they depict. In some works the surface is primed allowing pigment to sit upon the surface, in others the colour seeps into it. Thick and thin layers are deliberately misaligned in both acrylic and oil with resulting fissures in the painted surface. Some are resolutely abstract while others are representational (most sit somewhere between the two). Collaged elements within them appear as pictures within pictures or are assimilated into the whole like casual brushstrokes. There are also occasional suggestions of the repeat patterns associated with the applied arts but most are celebrations of incongruity.

The title of the exhibition comes from the red, green and blue colour separation used in television technology. Humphreys’ use of the term is somewhat ironic given that the works are determinately analogue and united by a grey ground. However, the reference stems from his use of flat, coloured MDF (a material more usually used in the production of children’s toys and furniture) to frame the works in simple, television-like box frames.

Humphreys (b. 1972 in Essex) lives and works in London and Lausanne. He studied at Winchester School of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art in the 1990s. He previously exhibited with the gallery in Cologne in 2017 and in London in 2014 and 2023. Other recent solo exhibitions of his work include those with Christian Andersen, Copenhagen, 2019; Schiefe Zähne, Berlin and North Dumpling, New York in 2018 and High Art, Paris in 2017. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including the 31st Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana (2015). In 2003 he opened the gallery Flaca in London which he ran until 2007. A revised history of this significant space was presented at Portikus, Frankfurt am Main in 2011