‘The Reality in Whytch You Create’ @ Studio West
Marking Studio West’s first group show since its opening in November 2021, The Reality in Whytch You Create crosses the moat and builds upon the idea of ‘once upon a time’ through the post-pandemic eyes of five emerging London artists, Sholto Blissett, Lydia Makin, Alfie Rouy, Anna Woodward, and Salomé Wu, all united by a common theme of world-building.
Disorienting and dizzying, a feeling similar to that of spinning in circles as a child, the surreal and the quotidian collide in an exploration of an altered and expanded reality inside the new Notting Hill space founded by curator Caroline Boseley and committed to championing new artists and fostering local community connection.
Alfie Rouy, The Reality in Whych you Create is Swyphtly Healed by Devotion to Good!, 2020. Acrylic on canvas. 126 x 100 cm.
Hypnotic and haunting, The Reality in Whytch You Create displays an assemblage of paintings by Blissett, Makin, Rouy, and Woodward with video and sound work by Wu; all of which are equal parts eerie and sublime in their nature and traverse the line that connects reality to the imagined and utopia to dystopia.
As you pass through a charming semi-circular arch - one that makes oh-so-much sense in Notting Hill - Rouy’s Love is a Basket of Light (2022) rushes to greet you, bright, beaming, and effortlessly juxtaposing two opposing thoughts of fluidity and rigidity in its depiction of a pair of serpentine creatures collapsing and crawling on top of the canvas they inhabit.
Alfie Rouy, Love is a Basket of Light, 2022. Acrylic on canvas. 180 x 150 cm.
Rouy is the brain behind the exhibition’s title which directly references another of his paintings titled The Reality in Whych you Create is Swyphtly Healed by Devotion to Good! (2021). He has noted that this particular work came to him in a dream and that sentences such as these come naturally when the work is completed. Naming his work is his favourite step of the process and the spelling of ‘whych’ and ‘swyphtly’ is a result of a personal affinity with the letter y, an instinctive and deliberate creative choice steeped in his own subconscious and the perfect metaphorical summary of exactly what is taking place inside the gallery.
On the opposite wall is Makin’s Unrighteousness (2021) in its slick, abstract splendour created with oil, both absorbing inward and projecting outward. It quietly communicates with Grace (2021) that resides on the gallery’s back wall and depicts another unusual character - a saintly and almost mythical figure draped in sweeping hues of blue rising up in ecstasy from her physical body. This serene scene was Boseley’s initial catalyst to curate this particular show and beautifully draws on two of the exhibition’s primary themes of fantasy and escapism through a more intimate lens. Its tranquillity is offset by its energy. She is fluid and peaceful yet unapologetically sensual and alive all at once, and one can’t help but think of this as an ideal description of a woman, both petal-like and empowered. Two sides to the same coin.
Anna Woodward, Land of the Fig and Snake, 2021. Oil on acrylic primed canvas. 35 x 45 cm.
As you continue through the space, small renderings of various post-human environments by Woodward are reminiscent of dystopian aftermath and bring to mind English botanical artist and photographer Anna Atkins’ nineteenth-century cyanotypes; the first-ever photographic illustration book filled with detailed blueprints of botanical specimens. Inspired by the adaptation of plants to their surrounding environment, Woodward revels in the unknown. The canvases are overwhelmed by mutated vegetation bursting with colour, and although there are no figures present in her displayed works, there is no absence of life here - it has simply been altered.
Sholto Blissett, Garden of Hubris XXV, 2021. Oil on canvas on board. 110 x 100 cm.
Moving towards the back, Blissett’s distinctive and intricate surreal landscapes come into view. Transfixing the viewer, warmth radiates from his precisely constructed scenes created with a consistently neutral and natural colour palette, yet their ghostly stillness also brings an uneasiness - similar to when you anticipate a final step that isn’t there. Blurring the lines between structural and supernatural, the works are layered in both their meaning and their execution, with Blissett noting that the layering of paint is crucial to his practice and is also the most time-consuming part of his process.
Salomé Wu, Wind Stood Still, Dancing Silently, 2021. Moving Image and Sound by Salomé Wu and Patrick James Fitzroy.
Rounding out the exhibition is Wu’s installation comprised of both video and sound work titled Wind Stood Still, Dancing Silently (2021). A response to the world around her during the pandemic, Wu felt drawn to the unification of the body with nature as a result of viewing an interview with Cuban-American multi-disciplinary artist Ana Mendieta, best known for her “earth-body” works. Loosely commenting on the passing of time as an abstract idea, Wu was eager to explore the idea of water as an essential life source and allowed herself to be naturally led to her filming locations. There is a rawness to the footage and although she is undoubtedly free, a heavy melancholic quality seeps in through its core, dazed, dream-like, and glazed over.
Studio West in Notting Hill. Photo by David Owens.
With the construction of five different boundless realities that permeate the senses and flirt with the imagined, the tales of these five artists read like fables and cause viewers to think forward whilst in a liminal, hypnopompic state - the transitional space between sleep and wakefulness. What will the world look like when the hypothetical becomes reality? While this is indeterminate, one thing at Studio West is for certain - it’s their world, and we’re just temporarily living in it.
Thanks to Olivia Wilson, Caroline Boseley, and Studio West on behalf of MADE IN BED.
All images are courtesy of the artists and Studio West.
The Reality in Whytch You Create is on view until 17 February 2022 at Studio West in London.
Rhiannon Roberts
Editor In Chief, MADE IN BED