Matthew Harris &
Paul March

28 November –
19 December 2019

Taste Contemporary is delighted to bring together two seemingly disparate artists, Matthew Harris & Paul March, for a unique exhibition that explores the parallels in each artist’s approach to making.

By creating work that is pieced, patched, layered and assembled, Matthew Harris explores repetition, pattern, line and image across and through the surface of cloth. Focusing on time and the slow laying down of material, his work is constructed in an almost archeological manner. For this exhibition Paul March presents an installation of unidentifiable, tuberous flowering plants that appear to have undergone some sort of process of petrification or preservation. Here the action of sculpting is determined by the morphogenic possibilities, constraints of matter and the historical patterning of repetitive gestures and sculptural habits.

About the Artists

Matthew Harris

Britain b. 1966

A graduate of the textile course at Goldsmiths College, Matthew Harris makes work that employs painting, cutting and hand stitching.  He has worked with textiles since 2000, having previously created and exhibited drawings and works on paper. Matthew Harris makes work that employs painting, cutting and hand stitching. It is concerned primarily with abstract imagery and the translation of drawn marks into cloth.  By making work that is pieced, patched and assembled, he aims to create pieces that explore repetition, pattern and the disrupted or dissonant journey of line and image across and through the surface of cloth.

He has shown in a number of group and solo exhibitions throughout the UK, Ireland US and Japan and his work has been acquired by The Whitworth Museum and Art Gallery and the Shipley Museum and Art Gallery. It is also included in numerous private collections. In 2014 he took part in Field Notes, a collaborative project with the British Composer Howard Skempton and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. In 2009, he completed Scorched, a ten metre long Graphic Score for the newly refurbished Colston Hall music venue in Bristol.

Matthew Harris lives and works in Britain.

Paul March

Britain b. 1961

Paul March is an English artist based in Geneva. Currently, he works mainly in clay, which he uses to explore ambiguity using primitive yet strangely elegant forms. A previous career as a clinical psychologist, specialising in neuropsychology, left him with an enduring fascination with how the brain perceives objects. As an artist, it is this, which drives his search to create objects that defy categorisation. The sensation of ambiguity, at both the visual and conceptual level, often coupled with the absurd, also runs through his earlier works in other media, including painting, photography, drawing and three-dimensional installations.

“I think that, with my own art, what I want most is for people to have some kind of sensation rather than a thought – a physiological rather than a purely conceptual reaction. I’m not alone in this, Francis Bacon was very interested in it. And in 1997 “Sensation” was the Saatchi group’s first big exhibition of British artists who influenced my generation. They too were more interested in provoking an emotion, a sense of confusion or anxiety, than in creating something that was merely visually pleasing.”

March studied fine art at the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD) from 2001-2004; and ceramics and polymerisation from 2009-2010 at the Centre d’Expérimentation et de Réalisation en Céramique Contemporaine in Geneva.

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