3.3 : Lindsey Bull, Minyoung Choi, Nettle Grellier

For our spring programme we are presenting three exhibitions, each featuring three works by three different artists. Titled 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3, these are inspired by the rule of three, the writing principle that a trio is more pleasing and effective and offers the minimum quantity required to form a rhythm or pattern. This simple rule enables a playful visual freedom and a dialogue to emerge between the selected artists.

Lindsey Bull's paintings depict a curious cross-section of people - they often seem lonely, melancholic, shy and introverted, as if trying to avoid our gaze or to distance themselves from the world. But they are also often eccentric, gregarious characters who enjoy their subcultural affiliations and live out inner fantasies through their outward appearance. While Bull is interested in the image, the fashions, the look of such individuals and groups, it is equally their inner lives that she is trying to capture. A posture, a glance, just a moment captured that gives something away about her subjects' states of mind, their personalities, their psychologies - these are the momentary revelatory flashes that Bull immortalises in paint.

Nettle Grellier's figurative oil paintings express closeness and friendship. The tenderness between the figures in her paintings suggest a sense of intimacy and safety against the disjointedness of today's restless world. Grellier finds reference material in books about textiles and pattern, and her subjects also hint at folklore and craft, doing gentle tasks with bare feet and hands; absorbed figures who are comfortable in the closeness with the other subjects. In contrast to contemporary experiences of alienation and loneliness, these scenes of repose and leisure contain a yearning for an idyllic and communal 'simple life'

Minyoung Choi's paintings explore aspects of time and place in the context of her memories. She allows her personal memories to be altered by vicarious experiences such as movies, cartoons, animations, novels, stories and photos she encounters, and frequently derives her motifs from her rough drawings or from found images. She creates surreal moments by making ordinary places or scenes become strange and mysterious, by manipulating lights, shadows or other elements. Light, in its various radiating sources - the moon, a laptop screen, a television, a lamp - often provides the focal point of the composition. Choi conveys the vaguely unreal reality that pervades imagination, dreams and memory, and which settles over familiar environments, people and things.