Press release

Liam Fallon / Max Rumbol, Home Sweet Home
13 November – 31 December 2020, Tuesday to Friday

In 2006, Alain De Botton published one of his many books titled ‘The Architecture of Happiness’ and in this writing, De Botton approaches the concept of our built environments and architectural spaces that we use. Throughout, we are greeted with a romanticized take on living; almost convincing us that the places that we inhabit do everything imaginable apart from physically wrapping their arms around you.

“The house has grown into a knowledgeable witness. It has been party to early seductions, it has watched homework being written, it has observed swaddled babies freshly arrived from hospital, it has been surprised in the middle of the night by whispered conferences in the kitchen. It has experienced winter evenings when its windows were as cold as bags of frozen peas and midsummer dusks when its brick walls held the warmth of newly baked bread.”

It provides food for thought when considering just what those walls have witnessed; some being memories that we hope lasts forever whilst others that we embarrassingly would rather forget. Either way, our built environments have provided physical and psychological sanctuary for each and every one of us but strangely enough, now more than ever. After all of this, where does art exist without architecture? In some of the earliest of cases of art, the Lascaux cave paintings depended entirely on the cave walls showing that the boundaries that we use are more than just asserting ownership or the distribution of space, they document our lives. It is without a doubt that without these boundaries, there would definitely be no walls with shoddy filling jobs done by your Dad and neither would there be your school portrait hanging in the living room where earlier that morning on photo day, you’d managed to drop toothpaste down the front of your school uniform.

For their show at Tuesday to Friday, artists Liam Fallon and Max Rumbol present their duo show aptly titled, Home Sweet Home. In this exhibition, both artists address and explore ideas surrounding our built environments through a combination of both painting and sculpture, resulting in the gallery space taking on an interpretive form of idealistic living space. Manchester-based artist Liam Fallon presents a new series of wall reliefs depicting objects and space markers from around the home which alert us to the room typologies that we encounter,daily. Continuing with his investigation into the binary of private and public space,wall reliefs of windows, lamps, and fireplaces are made from a combination of MDF and household paint. It is these sculptural forms which work to redefine the gallery space, giving a gentle nod to our private and built environments whilst London based painter Max Rumbol presents a series of paintings which reflect upon domestic art tropes. The 4 paintings in the show depict a romanticized view of isolation; the home providing a warm embrace for the absent artist figure. At the same time,we also see the domestic still life trope reflected in the form of dead flowers, which convey an obsession with making. In many ways, these environments become invisible to those living within, and perhaps it is only by reflecting from outside that we can truly see. The artist, hailing from rural England, explores an idealistic concept of the British countryside. In many ways reflecting on his upbringing with a fairytale-like nostalgia; bringing the works back to De Botton’s notion of our surroundings evoking and forging happiness.

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