AFTER MEDICATION: Random Treyfs and Artknacks
An exhibition of works on canvas and on paper by Jonathan Meades.
Londonewcastle Project, London E2 (2016)
Solo exhibition: 108 Gallery, Harrogate, England (2017)
Treyfs? Artknacks?
Treyf's literal meaning is that which is not kosher. Figuratively it signifies impurity - and Meades's work in every medium is deliberately impure. The title of his box of postcards Pidgin Snaps was explicit. He combines contradictory elements, he fuses opposing idioms, he conjures a rapprochement between his antagonistic precursors.
'Does he want to be Geoffrey Hill or Benny Hill?'
'He wants to be both - at the same time.'
Artknack evidently suggests: art; nicknack - a probably worthless trinket; knack - a tricksy, meretricious facility; arnaque - French for a con, a scam.
Meades's methods are several and rigorously inauthentic. Painting with numerous tools, froissage, hyper-realist photography, digital manipulation, collage and, above all, chance. When a work is begun there is seldom any conception of where it will lead: the aleatory is all.
The works range from the stubbornly monochrome to the tartily gaudy, from myth to abstraction, from the gutter to the dodgily numinous, from domestic proportions to XXXXXL.
Adieu, Francis Le Belge (inkjet on canvas, 170cm x 130cm)
IKB Struggles (131cm x 174cm)
Asterion Recalls Mother (131cm x 182cm)
As If It Were Yesterday (131cm x 174cm)
Vanity (In Ruins) (131cm x 147cm)
Pignight: The Screenplay (131cm x 160cm)
Cotchford: Final Memory (131cm x 151cm)
PIDGIN SNAPS AND GALLERY
Unbound has published a collection of Jonathan Meades's photos in the form of a box of 100 postcards entitled Pidgin Snaps.
'Expect them to become the literati's stocking filler of choice this holiday season.' Rachel Cooke, The Observer
The photos shown below do not form part of the Pidgin Snaps CollectionTM.
 
Self-portraits in different states of decomposition.
Waldringfield, Suffolk, autumn 1974. L-r: Snoo Wilson, Ann McFerran, Dusty Hughes, JM
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