About
“…In Ross Hamilton Frew’s ‘Boredom Patterns 1-3’. Frew removes the signifying potential of Cy Twombly’s forms, turning his line into dashes and swirls that escape the early hand-painted pop trajectory of Twombly’s canvases. The three paintings rest on the ground, emphasising their ‘objectness’, and invoke the crayon and coloured pencil forays into mark making that one finds on the walls of children’s bedrooms.”
Alexender Kennedy, The List, Issue 581 (From the review of ‘Now I Know My ABC’s)
Ross Hamilton Frew’s practice revolves around the idea of the forgotten; the discarded and the erased, like something from a lost existence.
He goes someway to achieving this through his painting. Appling thinly layered paint over and over again, wash after wash, the canvas board (his prefered painting surface) is then sanded down, and the edges roughed. More washes are then applied.This seems to give Frew’s paintings a sense of tension between creation and destruction.
The work he has created most recently consists of a collection of large scale painting that follow this technique, but with repeated random motifs such as scribbles, lines, dots, shapes and ink blots layer over the top. These dots, lines, etc… are small and drawn faintly, repeated in lines that aren’t perfectly straight, the human error is apparent, almost flaunted. This seems to be something that is of predominant importance in the work. A rhythm is created in the work as the individual motifs are repeated over and over again, growing and growing, into a vast pattern of beats; a pulse or a tempo. These rhythmical sequences introduce ideas of activity and evoke a feeling of some sort of human life and existence.
2009 April A Wee Tasty Experiment* Stereo Basement, Glasgow
2009 Mar Make it Break it! 68/70 Gallowgate Modern World
2009 Jan As We Speak Stereo Basement, Glasgow
2008 May Plus One* Flat K, Dundee 2008 May
They May Not Mean To, But They Do Kinblethmont Estate, Near Arbroath
2008 April Wicked Game Twisted Wheel, Glasgow
2007 Dec For Birds For People Forever* Our Back Garden, Glasgow
2007 Aug By The Kindness of Strangers The Helm Gallery, Tacoma, Washington
2007 July Now I Know My ABC’s SWG3, Glasgow
2007 May Degree Show Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee
2007 Feb RSA Annual Student Show Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
2007, 08 Jan Generator Projects Members Show Generator Projects, Dundee
2005 Mar Mobile Shop Unit Lower Foyer Gallery, Dundee
2004 June Living – Growing The Vennel Gallery, Irvine
Events marked * are co curated by myself
AWARDS
SWG3 StudioWarehouse Student Graduate Studio Award
