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  SHOWS + BIOGRAPHY
 
 Justin Mortimer

 born 1970

 1988-1992     Slade School of Fine Art, London

 Lives and works in London 

   recent exhibitions

SCOPE Miami
December 5th – 9th 2007

Location:
Roberto Clemente Park
101 NW 34th St
Wynwood Art District, Miami

www.scopemiami.com

PRESS RELEASE

MIAMI – SCOPE, Miami’s original emerging art fair, returns for its fifth year in Miami, expanded in size and global in reach, with 98 exhibitors from 22 countries, and a new 60,000 square foot pavilion at 101 NW 34th Street (NW 2nd Avenue) in Roberto Clemente Park in the Wynwood Art District.

Over the past five years, SCOPE, the first art fair to bring emerging galleries such as Peres Projects, Daniel Reich, John Connelly Presents, Taxter & Spengemann and Marella Gallery to a wider audience, has given many now-prominent emerging artists like Assume Astro Vivid Focus, Scissor Sisters and Black Label their first significant international exposure.

Introducing artists, curators, and cutting-edge galleries to new audiences internationally has made SCOPE the most comprehensive destination for the emerging art world available anywhere. With art fairs in Miami, Basel, New York, London, and the Hamptons, SCOPE is proud to be an influential presence in the expanding global art market.

With total sales of nearly $100 million and attendance of over 250,000 visitors, SCOPE has drawn wide media attention including CBS News, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Art in America, and ArtNet Magazine, which wrote, “Of the various art fairs in Miami, it was SCOPE that served up the best, both inside and out.”

Punk Loves Cupcake
November 2007
50 Pall Mall Deposit
124-128 Barlby Road
London W10 6BL www.houldsworth.co.uk

Houldsworth Gallery Press Release

Houldsworth Gallery is delighted to have taken on representation of Justin Mortimer, winner of East International 2004 at Norwich Art Gallery, selected by Neo Rauch and Gerd Harry Lybke, and to be presenting his first solo exhibition of paintings in the UK for seven years.

Mortimer's latest works are shocking, in a time when shock in art is almost impossible. It is not the floating limbs, out of place half figures, nor the flickering corpses which are shocking in Mortimer's towering canvases, but the very fact that the paintings appear to have arrested themselves. The universal principle of Mortimer's current project seems to be that the painting only becomes complete, not when it reaches harmony, neither when some conceptual or other message is expressed, nor when satisfaction creeps in, but when the painting surprises the artist himself.

This moment of rupture can take any form. Sometimes the form is a scraped away hand, an area of blank canvas, a massive monolithic application of paint, or a cut away figure. The result is always one of discord, when the narrative or legibility of the painting is silenced and another much more disturbing air enters the fray. The use of guerrilla tactics undoubtedly results in a kind of violence, but that is not to say that the paintings do not still posses delicacy or even melancholic contemplation. The violence is towards the act of finality and totality itself, as connected to the illusion of the skilled craftsperson. The violence is then an act of self-effacement and a shift from the precision of cultivated civilisation towards freewheeling chaotic freefall.

Place has become increasingly prominent in Mortimer's most recent pieces. These are specific places which Mortimer has visited and then photographed, places which you sense have been selected for their poignant beauty as associated with their systematic neglect - bunkers long since forgotten in times of peace, beaches and landscapes long since surpassed by sunnier climates and bluer skies. The specificity of place is then translated through its pared down representation into universal symbols of forgotten and repressed thought.

The evolution of Mortimer's work since winning the BP Portrait Award in 1991, and East International in 2004 tells a difference story. The haunting, but somewhat whimsical combination of figure and landscape in the winning entry for East has mutated into something much sharper and textured through the shear sweat and blood of Mortimer's practice. Mortimer has works in collections of National Portrait Gallery, Royal Society for the Arts, Royal Collection, Yoshitomo Nara, and Bank of America to name a few.

Contact:
Charlotte Perman or Pippy Houldsworth
+44 (0)20 8969 6166.
gallery@houldswoth.co.ukegallery@houldsworth.co.ukry@houldsworth.co.uk

ISOBAR       see images...........
contemporary drawing
curated by Gaia Persico

Fieldgate Gallery
14 Fieldgate Street
London E1


November  2007

www.fieldgategallery.com

Installation view EASTinternational 2004   Norwich School of Art June 2004                                                 Ar tist and EASTinternational 2004 selector Neo Rauch with Justin Mortimer