JOE CHEETHAM : SOMETHING IN THE WAY

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_1
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_9
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_12
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_8
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_11
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_17
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_14
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_5
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_2
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_13
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_10
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_15
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_3
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_7
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_4
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_6
installation_view_2024_joe_cheetham_annka_kultys_web_16
previous arrow
next arrow
Shadow
PRESS RELEASE       INSTALLATION VIEWS       ARTWORKS       ARTIST INFORMATION

JOE CHEETHAM

1 MARCH — 6 APRIL 2024

OPENING RECEPTION

WEDNESDAY 28 JANUARY, 6—8PM

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY

PRESS RELEASE

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY is pleased to present Joe Cheetham’s debut solo show with the gallery, Something in the Way. Featuring six large scale portraits, the exhibition expands upon the artist’s exploration of fluidity of feeling, gender and place in contemporary portraiture.

Starting with a distilled emotion in a cartoon sketch, Cheetham constructs each portrait in oil paint towards a balance of the real and the stylised. These works build on his practice developed during a residency with PLOP Residency last year, in the gallery’s former space on Hackney Road, which saw a shift away from spray painted cartoons and a return to the sleek nuances of oil paint. Layering a vibrant palette of digital colour with contemporary details, from fashion to hairstyles, he balances feeling with physicality.

The resulting installation is filled with six faces which greet and envelop the viewer in their group gaze. Through repetition of their stylised features – the enlarged and memeified side-eyes and pouting lips – the works maintain an ambiguity of gender, place and time which focuses on the cusp of feelings.

On the walls are six large scale portraits, tight crops of heads turned to meet your gaze against a burst of background colour. On first impression, they seem overly expressive. Their features enlarged and on the cusp of cartoonish, their lips, eyes and in some instances hands, creeping into the frame too, all settle between repetition and recognition. We encounter a family of features and a room full of feeling. But what that feeling is, is not fully clear. 

The works are Untitled, removing a layer of distraction from what’s before us. What comes to the fore instead is their ambiguity across gender, time and place. There is a fluidity and timelessness that balances with recognisability established by the repetition of close-up features. The first to catch your eye as you enter the gallery turns tanned cheek and almost memefied side eye towards you. Beneath strands of glossy, tousled hair, their olive green eyes nonchalantly meet yours. This painted moment captures confidence on the cusp between greeting and guard coming down.

What gives the clearest indication of feeling in these portraits is not their expressions but the colours they are set against. Removing any reference to landscape or location that could pull focus, Cheetham uses a vibrant palette to balance feeling and physicality. In this first work, a shock of red plays with bold blue with attractive confidence. Working clockwise around the room, burnt orange is warm and welcoming beneath pale skin, blond hair and lilac grey cloth. A soft yellow sits above an absorbing black and matches the mellow mood conveyed through a chin cupped in a hand. A concrete beige meets supple denim, playing with hard and soft similarly to pouting lips and furrowed brow. There is a blue you can’t dive into, lifted higher by the sweep of brighter green, a vest strap against shoulder, like a game of seduction that remains surface level. A forest green against lilac and plum stripes combines in a beautiful confusion. 

The visual language of these paintings feels raised from digital roots, a collage of references reconstructed that lend themselves well to being photographed and instagrammed. They are further faces, bright colours, sleek and fashionable. They are also paintings that capture varied moments of constructed contemporary feeling, a series of fleeting first impressions fixed in oil paint, allowing us to observe them in close detail between introversion and intimacy.

INSTALLATION VIEWS

ARTWORKS

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
JOE CHEETHAM 

Untitled
2024
Oil on canvas
160 x 130 cm
(63 x 51 in)
Unique
(JChe001.24)
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
JOE CHEETHAM 

Untitled
2024
Oil on canvas
160 x 130 cm
(63 x 51 in)
Unique
(JChe002.24)
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
JOE CHEETHAM 

Untitled
2024
Oil on canvas
160 x 130 cm
(63 x 51 in)
Unique
(JChe003.24)
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
JOE CHEETHAM 

Untitled
2024
Oil on canvas
160 x 130 cm
(63 x 51 in)
Unique
(JChe004.24)
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
JOE CHEETHAM 

Untitled
2024
Oil on canvas
160 x 130 cm
(63 x 51 in)
Unique
(JChe005.24)
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
JOE CHEETHAM 

Untitled
2024
Oil on canvas
160 x 130 cm
(63 x 51 in)
Unique
(JChe006.24)

ARTIST INFORMATION

Joe Cheetham’s practice explores the nuances of contemporary human emotion through figurative painting, from his early spray-painted cartoons, exhibited as expanded installations and recently in oil painting. After rejecting oil painting during his MFA, he completed a residency at PLOP on Hackney Road, which led to a shift in his focus and his medium.  From the distilled highs of club culture and the playful, symbolic nature of cartoons, his recent projects investigate more ambiguous emotions in oil paint. His latest projects explore figurative painting as vessels for varied emotions, with over-exaggerated eyes, seeking connection through the contemporary gaze. 

Cheetham (b. 1992) lives and works in Glasgow, UK. Recent solo shows include: ‘Something in the Way’, ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY, London (2024); ‘Something for the Weekend’, L21 Gallery, Palma de Mallorca (2021); ‘Can you feel it?’ TACO!, London (2019); ‘Such a good feeling’, Jackob Kroon Gallery, Worthing (2019) and ‘Joe Cheetham’, Trade Gallery, Nottingham.  

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY