Gordon Dalton
SLOW RIFFS
Aleph Contemporary
April 2024
SLOW RIFFS brings together new work by Gordon Dalton. The places depicted in Dalton’s paintings are haunted by memories of places he has have lived or longingly imagined, with a renewed focus on his native North East coast.
They are a slow archaeological and a painterly investigation into these landscapes, where Dalton both buries and reveals the time and history of a place, often returning to familiar motifs, ‘riffing’ on the same idea. Full of contrasts and spontaneity, they ask the viewer to look longer and harder, to have a one on relationship with landscape painting, to make them curious and find some hope.
Dalton talks of the work in terms of solastalgia – ‘the homesickness we feel while still at home. It’s the pain and longing we feel as we realize the world immediately around us is changing.’
Dalton’s paintings convey an idea and essence of a place and the melancholy of longing and wanting to belong. An unfashionable romanticism grounded in the act of painting.
Gordon Dalton was born in Middlesbrough, 1970. He lives in Saltburn by the Sea, UK. He is currently a Doctoral Researcher at Loughborough University.
He is a represented by Aleph Contemporary.
Select solo exhibitions
Auxiliary Warehouse, Middlesbrough; Trade Gallery, Nottingham; Bay Art, Cardiff; Last Gallery, Llangadog; Bank Gallery, Los Angeles; Keith Talent, London; Marksman Gallery, Reading; Castlefield Gallery, Manchester and Moot Gallery, Nottingham (with S Mark Gubb).
Select group shows
Royal Academy, London; Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance; Contemporary British Painting Prize, Riverside Gallery, Richmond; Beep Wales Painting Prize, Swansea; Del Infinito Art Gallery, Buenos Aires; Terrace Gallery, London; Pineapple Black, Middlesbrough; National Eisteddfod of Wales, Abergavenny; Exeter Contemporary Open, Exeter Phoenix; Transition, London; Syson, Nottingham; Bank Art, Los Angeles; Galerie Skuc, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Cynthia Broan Gallery, New York; Moravian Museum, Brno
