Nick Fox

'Parlour' (2006) was selected by a panel of subject specialists for the newly launched 'Jerwood Contemporary Painters'.

In 'Parlour' (2006), a three-dimensional painting made of a reproduction Edwardian table covered with a 'tablecloth' of acrylic paint featuring decoupage and drawing into a support of acrylic paint, encoded figurative and floral symbols are secreted into skins of acrylic paint, which is then folded over domestic period furniture, subverting the orthodox narrative of painting and proposing that the painting material and the artefact itself becomes part of the narrative content. Investigating the slippage between painting and objecthood, while also questioning the value of painting where the contextual references of the domestic table could bleed into the reading of the work and sublimate the erotic content of the drawing, the research focused on how material can act as a metaphor for narrative content, conducting specific sets of codes, signs and symbols inherent in both the material of painting and the artefact.