Paddy Lamb and Claire Lamb | Once Removed

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Left: Paddy Lamb, "Whitewash (but the game goes on)," Right: Claire Lamb, "Smokestacks in the Swimming Pool"

Left: oil on canvas, 48" × 60", Right: oil on canvas, 31" × 59". Courtesy of the Gallery.

The title, Once Removed is of course a reference to the artists’ relationship as father and daughter. It could also refer to both Paddy and Claire’s interest in landscapes that are ‘removed’ from reality.

Both artists use the medium of painting to explore the boundaries of representation. Yet they do so by following very independent pathways that draw on different sources and overlapping experiences. In both cases the result is work that goes well beyond any nostalgic longing for the past. Instead it recognizes the importance of memory in finding a gateway to a form of self-examination; a search for alternatives that continues to define our own ‘sense of place’ but still represent our lives and everything we know.

Paddy Lamb

As in his previous work Paddy Lamb’s paintings continue to ask questions about traditional notions of history, memory, and monument, particularly the recent tendency to project our own desires, weaknesses, and passions on the past without any opposition – for the past cannot speak. He is troubled by the predictability and certainty of our times and the papering over of mistakes and past endeavours.

The forms that are represented here are not simply walls, gates, or plains within a landscape. They are also facades – ‘learning walls’ that hold the imprint of people and the stories and events that have accompanied them. In each case the aim is to invite the viewer into a space that suggests connections to memory and history without predicting a certain outcome.

[Monument is] that which preserves memory through its very being, that which speaks directly, through the fact that it was not intended to speak – the layout of territory that testifies to the past activity of human beings better than any chronicle of their endeavours; a household object, a piece of pottery, a stele, a pattern painted on a chest, or a contract between two people we know nothing about. Jacques Ranciere. Figures of History

Claire Lamb

Bugera Matheson Gallery is proud to introduce the art of Claire Lamb. 

Her work is skillful with depth and gravity rare in such a young talent. I am sure this is in part due to the mentorship of her father, artist Paddy Lamb.

Claire’s practice revolves around themes of nostalgia, memory and the unique materials used in these practices of recollection. Memorabilia and architecture are a predominant focus of this exploration as she is fascinated with patterns of human recollection and the physical objects, spaces, textiles that leave strong and lasting impressions on us. Her paintings are equally devoted to an exploration of the medium itself and discovering a new sense of landscape on a two-dimensional scale.

Her most recent work has honed in on the idea of place in general, experimenting with dimensionality and provoking questions about how we as people can interpret and remember the same place in such varying ways. There are references in these paintings to places that both Claire and her father know very well, but appear drastically different from one another in each of their work which fuels this fascination and exploration even further.

“An empty drawer is unimaginable. It can only be thought of. And for us, who must describe what we imagine before what we know, what we dream before what we verify, all wardrobes are full.” Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space