Kiera Bennett & Phil Root are both in Love Peace and Happiness at Menier Gallery until 22 April

Love Peace and Happiness

Wednesday 12 - Saturday 22 April

Menier Gallery

Kiera Bennett, George Little, Phil Root, Anthony Banks, Nicholas Johnson, Gwennan Thomas, Nick Jensen, Fiona Curran, Jackson Spragu

Curated by Kristian Day

Love, Peace and Happiness brings together a group of contemporary artists who share an interest in using vocabularies of the decorative in their work.

Decoration has always resisted boundaries. It speaks of cross-cultural appropriation and contamination, of mixed social and cultural histories. Its recurring motifs and patterns travel across continents and resurface in different objects, materials and spaces. It raises questions of aesthetic value from the rarefied to the kitsch and it appeals to senses beyond the visual with its dispersion into everyday environments and objects of use. Objects that might be held and touched, loved and worn, damaged and repaired. In many of the works on show there's a push pull between surface, environment and support as the artists seek to liberate themselves from the logic of the frame. Paintings expand onto the surrounding walls and supports and patterns disperse onto domestic objects or sculptural forms within the paintings and without. There's an exuberant appeal to colour, pattern and texture. Previous generations of artists from William Morris to the Constructivists, from the Omega Workshops to the 1960s Counterculture, have harnessed its power as a force for social change. The artists in this exhibition appear to acknowledge is the decorative's persistence as a mode of enquiry in the contemporary, which perhaps still embodies a space of endless possibility and positive promise.

More info can be found here