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jan 2017 - ted
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NICHOLAS MAY - ARTIST
'The idea of a Tate Gallery of the future
without May's work seems inconceivable'.
Stuart Morgan, Art Monthly
''Freefall', 2005 - 270 x 220 cms
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BIOGRAPHY
Education
1981 -84 Bath Academy of Art (BA)
1988-90 Goldsmiths College, London (MA)
Solo Exhibitions
1990 - U7 Contemporary Art London
John Hansard Gallery Southampton
1991- Frith Street Gallery London
1994 - Victoria Miro Gallery London
Cornerhouse Manchester
South London Gallery
Leeds Metropolitan University Gallery Leeds
1996 - Victoria Miro Gallery London
1998 - 291 Gallery, London
2004 - Riflemaker , London
2007 - Galeria Fruela, Madrid
Group Exhibition
1989-90 - ICA NewContemporaries, ICA, London
1990 - Countdown (6 Goldsmiths MA Graduates) Chisenhale Gallery London
1991 - Barclay's Young Artist Award, Serpentine Gallery, London
Nicholas May, Nicholas Rule, Paul Winstanley - Paley Wright, London
Artisti Invitati AlPremio Internationale - Milan, Rome, London, USA
1992 - CAS Collections: Recent Purchases, 1989-92 Camden Arts Centre, London
'Process Painting', Fabio Sargentini, Assoc. Culturale L'Attico, Rome
'Bruise: painting for the 90's' - Icon Gallery, B'gham
Whitechapel Open Invitation, Whitechapel Gallery, London
1993 - 'Strictly Painting' (cur. Anthony Wilkinson) Cubitt Street Gallery, London
'Moving into View', (Arts Council Collection) Royal Festival Hall, London
'Sense and Sensuality', (cur. Charles Esche) Kettles Yard, Cambridge
'Visione Britannica', Valentina Moncada, Rome
1994 - British Abstraction - Flowers East, London
1995 - Victoria Miro Gallery, London
'Mutated Paintings' - Gallery Martina Detterer, Frankfurt
'Life Patterns' - Tate Gallery, London
1996 - 'Tracer' - The Tannery, London
Young British Artists (cur. Glen Scott Wright) Roselyn Oxely Gallery, Aus.
'Out of Space' (cur. Emma Sandbach) - Cole and Cole, London
1997 - 'Residue' - Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin
1997 - 'Host' - Tramway, Glasgow
1998 - Group Exhibition - Ascan Crone Gallery, Hamburg
1999/2000 - '0044' Group Exhibition (Irish artists working in England) - PS1 NewYork
2005 - Riflemaker, London
2005 - Controlled, Bury St Edmunds
2007 - Galeria Razzonica, Venice
Bibliography
1990 - Collings, Matthew - Art Now: Guide to the Arts 1990, The Sunday Correspondent (Jan)
Craddock, Sacha - Review of U7 Contemporary Art, The Guardian
Lillington, David - Review of U7 Contemporary Art Time Out (May)
Craddock, Sacha - 'Look No Hands' - review of John Hansard exhibition, The Guardian (Dec)
Searle, Adrian - Nicholas May - John Hansard Exhib. Catalogue (1990)
1991 - Hilton, Tim - Review of 1990, The Guardian (Jan)
Kent, Sarah - Barclays Young Artist Award, Time Out (Feb 13-20)
Morgan, Stuart - Review of John Hansard Gallery exhibition Artscribe (Mar-Apr)
Lillington, David - Review of Frith Street Gallery Exhibition, Time Out (May 14)
Feaver, William - 'What's Up Duck? Just a Double Take', The Observer (May 25)
Lillington, David - Review of Frith Street Gallery Exhibition, Metropolis No.4 (Aug)
Kent, Sarah - Review of Paley Wright exhibition, Time Out (Oct)
1992 - Godfrey, Tony - Review of Frith Street Gallery Exhibition, Art in America (Jan)
Alberge, Dalya - 'Making Their Mark', Independent (Jan)
Hilton, Tim - 'Rising in the East End', The Guardian (Jun 25)
Kent, Sarah - 'Open to Question', Time Out (Jul 8-15)
Lubbock, Tom - 'Cruisin' for a Bruisin' in Brum', The Independent (Jul)
1994 - Kent, Sarah - Review South London Gallery / Victoria Miro Time Out (May )
Morgan, Stuart - Nicholas May, S. London Gallery / Cornerhouse Exhibition Catalogue (1994)
1995 - Archer, Michael - Review South London Gallery, Art Forum (Jan)
1996 - Cromer, Martin - Review Victoria Miro Gallery , TimeOut (May)
Searle, Adrian - 'Who's Buying Who', Guardian (Jun)
1997 - Collings, Matthew - 'Blimey' Pub. by '21' (1997)
2001 - Croomer, Martin - British Abstraction review (Aug)
2004 - Cromer, Martin - Time Out
Collections
Tate Gallery, London
Saatchi Collection, London
Simmons and Simmons, London
Pro-Arte, London
Stuart Lipton, London
Fabio Sargentini, Rome
E &Y, Tokyo
Arts Council of Great Britain, London
Glaxo, London
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CATALOGUES
1999/2000 - '0044' - Cork Municipal Art Gallery
n/a 1992 - 'Process Painting' - L'Attico, Roma
1994 - 'Nicholas May' - South London Gallery (forthcoming)
1991 - John Hansard Gallery
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ESSAY
That art Thou: The paintings of Nicholas May
by Christopher Bucklow
The sensuous melding of liquid into liquid is a quality that Nicholas May has courted in almost all his work. He clearly holds fluidity in high regard. Similarly he values intensity. Rarely since the fifteenth century have we seen the lapis lazuli of the Madonna’s set against cardinal scarlets and the glint of precious metals. In high esteem he also holds complexity. His fluids are held in a moment in which they intermingle like weather systems - the areas of colour still distinct, but in dynamic interaction - caught before the equilibrium of entropic grey had time to begin to dull the mix of hues.
In terms of form, the modes Nicholas May prefers are of two kinds - either he uses a self-contained shape suspended in a high-key colour field, or the form is unfolded out from its containment - almost spilt out - to occupy the whole canvas as a field of energetic visual incident.
I believe all these qualities to be personal metaphors - either of mind or of the mind-body system. Despite his reliance on the physics of his materials as the proximate agent of his design, for me there is no accident here. The qualities he prizes in his work are the qualities of being he courts. In this we might see them as self-symbols - representations of a mind - but it is unclear whether they reflect an actual inner state or a wished for ideal. In any case they appear as equivalents for their creator . In this sense they are self-portraits. But I suspect Nicholas May’s experience of the self is highly expanded from any narrow view of the ego. My guess would be that the dark self-contained forms of his early work represent a wonder at the rich unknowable interior of his psyche; one that is so much greater than the area of consciousness we tend to habitually think of as our selves.
His early self-contained forms seem to reflect a desire to hold himself together within a liminal envelope. Such a feeling would seem to reflect a wonder at the singularity of being. But his expanded all over fields indicate a counter urge - the desire to melt that individuality of being into an field of limitlessness.
Within the arts, after the beginning of Romantic-modernism in the late Eighteenth century, what you do is what you are. Your work is paradigmatic of your self - its moral and philosophical values. The quadrangle of the canvas becomes a symbolic arena in which the rules of engagement one invents for oneself in the use of materials are a paradigm - in microcosm - the artist’s view of human nature and of what the ideal of the human should be. All the actions and choices made within that rectangle become symbolic of the self.
Allowing the paint to more or less create its own internal forms, as he has done in most of his work, must indicate a distrust of the narrow vision of ego-conscious self and a trust in something vaster than that limited self could achieve in the determination of the image. What is new in this recent work is that touch has returned to a much greater degree. The forms we now see are disposed by the presence of the artist’s hand - much in the way a marbler might work. We would have to suspect that a new balance between the unconscious and the conscious has been forged.