Before The Past And Beyond The Future
8th March – 19th April
Opening Night, 8th March, 6 – 8pm
Oil on canvas, 51 x 61cm, £650
Oil on canvas, 70 x 100cm, £1,200
Oil on canvas, 51 x 61cm, £650
Oil on canvas, 51 x 61cm, £650
Oil on canvas, 51 x 61cm, £650
Oil on canvas, 51 x 61cm, £650
Oil on canvas, 70 x 100cm, £1,200
Oil on canvas, 70 x 100cm, £1,200
Oil on canvas, 70 x 100cm, £1,200
Oil on canvas, 51 x 61cm, £650
Oil on canvas, 51 x 61cm, £650
Oil on canvas, 70 x 100cm, £1,200
Tarpey Gallery, Castle Donington, Sat 8 Mar to 19 Apr
Dermot Punnett overlays abstract forms on to recognisable landscapes to turn them into places of obscurity and intrigue. Woodland undergrowth is superimposed with mysterious geometric diagrams as if to point out some inscrutable meaning (work pictured). He uses oil on canvas to precisely delineate mountainsides and treetops then resorts to what he calls “dragging techniques” to warp the viewer’s perspective. A mass of dots haunts the skyline like a flock of digitised starlings. A jungle is infiltrated by a framework of classical columns. The colours tend towards the aquatic: turquoise, deep blue, acidic green.
Robert Clarke
Press Release
Midlands based painter Dermot Punnett is exhibiting a new series of paintings at Tarpey Gallery from 8th March to 19th April , 2014. Titled Before The Past And Beyond The Future, these new works emerge from imagery both personal and found whilst incorporating the effects of reproduction and pixilation into a painterly aesthetic.
“My work oscillates between painting as image and painting as a material process. I’m concerned with the tension that exists between the illusion and the surface. I start by painting the image in a representational manner and then apply dragging techniques, pushing and pulling the paint and causing ruptures in the image.”
Dermot Punnett, 2013
Through this process Dermot is looking to engage with and understand the complexities of perception and experience, whilst perhaps reflecting on a sense of modern day anxiety.
The work itself is a mix of abstraction and figuration, geometric forms are superimposed onto the painterly landscape, with one informing or obscuring the other.
“The image is at first immediately accessible but beyond the familiar there is something more to be discovered, something both enlightening and enchanting”
Luke Tarpey, Tarpey Gallery Solo Show Award, Nottingham Castle Open 2013
Artist Statement
My work oscillates between painting as image and painting as a material process. I’m concerned with the tension that exists between the illusion and the surface.
Working from personal photography and found images, I utilize the effects of reproduction and pixilation on a painterly aesthetic.
I start by painting the image in a representational manner and then apply dragging techniques, pushing and pulling the paint and causing ruptures in the image.
Within this I use geometrical abstractions, playing on a sense of entropy and order; the impermanence of form, but also the crystalline nature of its emergence. Through this process I try to understand and internalize perception and experience, whilst reflecting on a sense of modern day anxiety.
Qualifications and training
2007 MA Fine Art, Painting, Bath Spa University, Bath
2004 BA Fine Art, Painting, Falmouth College of Arts, Falmouth, Cornwall
Group exhibitions
2013 Alter//Shift//Control, Bermondsey Project, London
2013 Nottingham Castle Open, Nottingham Castle, Nottingham
2012 Diamond Armour, ARTicle Gallery, BCU, Birmingham
Curated by Mona Casey
2012 Nottingham Castle Open, Nottingham
2012 Odds Against Tomorrow, Bearspace Gallery, London
2011 Longlisted for Mysteries, Beers.Lambert, London
2011 Surface Open, Surface Gallery, Nottingham
2011 Creekside Open, APT Gallery, London
Selected by Dexter Dalwood
2010 Crash Open, Charlie Dutton Gallery, London
Selected by Matthew Collings and Dan Hays
2010 Longlisted for John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize
2010 Artswork Open, Barbican Arts Group Trust, London
2010 Dialogues: A Fake Romance?,
Elysium Gallery, Swansea
2009 Arctic Fox, Vulpes Vulpes, London
2009 Open Call, Frieze Projects, Frieze Art Fair, London
2008 Up & Coming, CUC Northwest, Liverpool
2008 Use Your Peripheral Vision to Make A Decision, The Lloyd Gill Gallery, Weston-Super-Mare
Awards/ Residencies
2013 Residency at The Vermont Studio Center, Fellowship Award July ’13, Awarding Body: The Reed Foundation
2013 Recipient of the Tarpey Gallery Solo show Award, Nottingham Castle Open
Text/ Publications
May 2013, Issue no.7, ARC Magazine, Contemporary Visual Arts And Culture. Feature: ‘A Patterned Language’
By Melanie Archer, Pages 8-15
Sept 2013, www.arcthemagazine.com. Online Feature: ‘Dermot Punnett : The Distance Between’ By Blake Daniels
