The first swing of the bat, an exhibition of work by Ned Armstrong, Max Gimson, Ariane Heloise Hughes, Sophie Lourdes Knight, Viktor Mattsson, Holly Mills, Jade Ching-yuk Ng, Daniel Taylor, Heidi Ukkonen, and Maia Regis. The show pulls together a broad collection of language and conceptual framework, each artist bringing a distinct language to the show. The exhibiting artists primarily work with paint, sculpture, collage, drawing and printmaking also play in a role. The ambition of this show is to present an ariel view of painting now. History ebbs through the show, folkloric, medieval narratives, whether the mythical is addressed in a graphic, digital language or sensual formalism, the everyday physically buried in gesture or meticulously considered in naturalistic tendencies.

A low hum, the sun hanging high, a full carpark, a seemingly endless sea of radio fuzz, groggy eyes, long drives, tens of thousands of pilgrimages, collective expectations and escape.The first swing of the bat alludes to a tight grip, bat in hand, and the moments before the batter swings, the tension, suspense and release of these nanoseconds. The ritualistic nature of honing skills in anticipation of performance and the zones occupied in two states is a thread not dissimilar to that found in any studio. The palpable, tangible excitement of a long awaited event, a thread reproduced endlessly in cinema and literature. The introduction to Don Delillo’s Underworld and Takeshi Kitano’s Boiling Point each contributed to the conception of the show. Delillo’s minute description of the excitement coupled with Kitano’s absurd nostalgic odyssey, subverting the banal, unrolling untold events. Visual equivalents have been sought to mirror the tension, malleability, elasticity and scale cited in Delillo and Kitano’s narratives.