Episode IV: Lauren Brown, Host

Matt Carey-Williams presents the second solo exhibition of work by Lauren Brown, entitled 'Host'. About In this latest body of paintings, Brown explores the uncertain relationships between invitation and expulsion, containment and dissolution, interiority and exteriority. Animated by opposing forces, forms gather and transform across densely worked surfaces, only to resist the boundaries and structures that appear to contain them. Marks accumulate, overlap and interrupt one another, creating arabesques of opposing orders and choreographed chaos. The suggestion of a recognisable body emerges from the paintings’ density and pressure, before dissolving into the surrounding space. Colour plays a central role in establishing the atmosphere of these works. Purples retain the depth of secrets; reds carry warmth and hope before combusting into darkness; lavender tones spread across the surface like wintry mist, while teals open sudden, submerged distances within the warmer tumult of Brown’s palette. The resulting compositions possess a bruised luminosity, in which colour and gesture continually alter the perception of form. Suspended between emergence and dissolution, the paintings resist any final resolution. At the heart of Host is the uncertain relationship between interior and exterior. To be ‘in’ suggests attachment, accumulation and the pressures of containment; to be ‘out’ implies the dissolution of boundaries, passage and otherness. Brown brings these conditions into constant negotiation, as bodies become landscapes and physical presence gives way to psychological space. The host becomes both a site of possibility and a source of tension, capable of sustaining something while simultaneously threatening to prise it apart. This instability extends beyond the painted surface. What begins within the artist becomes a physical object; what stands before the viewer enters their attention; what is taken away finds another place to live. In Host, the act of looking becomes another form of encounter, with each painting holding the traces of gestures that seem eager to escape their boundaries. As one door opens, another closes, only for yet another to open. Brown’s paintings remain poised between invitation and expulsion, their surfaces holding the traces of a process that refuses to settle. Read more Toggle Painting