‘In spite of their unearthly strangeness I had a feeling
that there was something familiar about them.’ William Hope Hodgson, The Crew
of the Lancing, 1914
CHARLIE SMITH LONDON is delighted to present Tom Butler’s
third solo exhibition at the gallery.
‘Ensemble’ will include three bodies of work. In addition
to Butler’s ongoing series of painted cabinet cards, for which he is most
recognised, the exhibition will represent the London debut of two new
photographic series. Conveying a fascination with photographic portraiture from
the medium’s earliest phases, combined with an enquiry into Victorian Gothic
literature, and specifically its tendency to describe the body as liable to ruin,
shape changing or re-assemblage, Butler continues to make beguiling, uncanny
images.
In ’Ten Elmers’, Butler has collected ten identical cabinet
cards in order to work on the same image with various motifs. In doing so, he
suggests identities are characterized by embellishment, but also by what
remains unadorned. The performative self-portrait ‘Figure’ series adopts a
similar strategy. By using a remote-control shutter release and black fabric to
mask most of his body, Butler creates images that are determined predominantly
by what is concealed, rather than revealed. In his ‘Homunculi’ series, Butler
directly references Gothic and alchemical tropes. In contrast to the shrouded ‘Figure’
photographs, Butler combines multiple images of his own exposed body parts to
create singular, abject self-portraits.
Taken together, this fascinating body of work is far more
revelatory than Butler’s previous canon, elucidating on the body as an
objectification of self. The physical transformation of body or body elements
renders the subject ambiguous by obscuring its identity, whilst infusing it
with disquieting psychological resonance.
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