Forget-me-not (detail), Acrylic, oil and dye on canvas and linen, 25 cm x 25 cm, Hannah Turner-Duffin 2018
This exhibition's title dyb dyb dyb recalls the Scout movement's chanted acronym: Do Your Best, Do Your Best, Do Your Best. As motto-cum-mantra, it echoes the repeated dab dab dabs of paint that Turner-Duffin layers onto her collaged canvases in swarming particulate clouds of colour.
Elsewhere, her "tufted" paintings employ a similarly repetitive process: thin strips of canvas are woven and frayed to form a rag-rug surface, rendering the traditional picture plane neither illusionistic nor flat, but fluffy and tactile.
Both techniques involve slow quiet forms of manual labour with associations that have, in the past, been gendered ("women's work"), pathologized (stereotypy), art historically marginalised (indigenous Australian dot painting) and discounted (occupational therapy). This contrasts with painting's historical role as a quintessentially dominant art form.
However, Turner-Duffin's paintings evoke not only their own crafting, but also a wide range of landscape associations: the tufted paintings recalling moss-covered rock faces; the larger fields of marks reading as both microbial and topographic.
Matt Lippiatt
Gerald Moore Gallery presents the first solo exhibition of Hannah Turner-Duffin. Born in 1984, she lives and works in London having studied at Falmouth College of Art, The Royal Drawing School and Turps Art School.
Gerald Moore Gallery presents the first solo exhibition of Hannah Turner-Duffin. Born in 1984, she lives and works in London having studied at Falmouth College of Art, The Royal Drawing School and Turps Art School.