Annice Fell: Balancing Act

18 January - 17 February, 2024

‘The fulcrum upon which Annice Fell’s paintings find their flow and voice their fortitude – if not necessarily any denouement or equilibrium – is an effervescence of tension, articulated by a series of binary antagonisms – be they born of plane, paint, or process – that, in their contest, imbue Fell’s surface with a lyrical ebullience that registers itself as a lavish cryptanalysis of colour.

Underpinning Fell’s desire for such delicious conflict is her equal desire to orchestrate gesture to evince a surface simultaneously interior and exterior - abbreviated then expanded by acts inclusive and excluding – that speaks to the seduction of a discombobulation physical, psychological, and indexical. This begins with the concours between a ground that starts with a found and predisposed mark delivered by a monoprint, providing an albeit amoebic architecture against which Fell’s painted marks riff, dance, and sing. An irony thus chuckles in the background of Fell’s paintings; one that denotes the oxymoronic relationship between the ubiquity of the hand-painted mark, and the ghostly dubiety of the found mono-printed mark, achieved through an act of removal, with which it nevertheless tries to tango.

– Matt Carey-Williams