Dale Grimshaw solo show - 'Moreish'

Dale Grimshaw is a dynamic artist calling on powerful emotions and strongly held belief to fuel his creative output.  This tumultuous energy has produced a marvelous series of paintings over the past five years - works that have often been highly personal, but because of their directness and honesty, have succeeded in resonating with very many people.

In his new show, ‘Moreish’ Dale is deeply concerned by the increasingly desperate dance of excess that he sees so many of us jig along to. As the artist says ‘It’s a case of enough is never enough. The ‘haves’ want more and the ‘have nots’ can pay for it. Once we get that acquisitive taste, we just want more and more’.

The response from the artist to this view of the world is ironically seductive. Succulent cakes, fruit, meat, chocolate and cream are piled on top of each other in an orgy of visual sensations. The works themselves have a disturbingly ‘Moreish’ appeal and despite the artist’s displeasure at a world where ‘some people don’t have a pot to piss in, while others are eating live octopus and filming the torture for youtube’, the images take on a Rubenesque lushness, full of symbolism and atmosphere.

Indeed much of the imagery references the increasingly overblown world of the baroque, a world that was on a collision course with the French Revolution. There is an underlying sadness, as if the artist is saying that this unsustainable behaviour will surely come to a crashing end at some point soon.