Art Brussels

For the 2024 edition of Art Brussels, Hales is delighted to return to the fair with a presentation of works by Martyn Cross, Hew Locke and Rob Lyon. 

 

Martyn Cross  (b. 1975, Yate, UK) lives and works in Bristol, UK. Cross is primarily a painter, creating works that speak to ancient and mythic lands. Applying thin layers of dry-brush pigment, the paintings are reminiscent of unearthed artefacts. Drawing on a myriad of concepts from mythology and the medieval, Cross' works personify the landscape. Figures, eyes and solitary limbs emerge from clouds and rivers, speaking to an alternate fiction. Ambiguous narratives are formed in reoccurring scenes and motifs, creating an immersive world. Biomorphic landscapes speak to mythologies, but in Cross's paintings the narratives are knowingly ambiguous. Familiar and mysterious, quiet and epic, scale and irregularity in proportion puzzles the viewer. His first institutional solo show took place in 2023 at Flatland Projects, Bexhill on Sea, UK, the same year in which he was shortlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize.

 

Hew Locke RA OBE  (b. Edinburgh, UK, 1959) spent his formative years (1966-80) in Guyana before returning to the UK to complete an MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art (1994) and was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 2022. Locke explores the languages of colonial and post-colonial power, how different cultures fashion their identities through visual symbols of authority, and how these representations are altered by the passage of time. These explorations have led Locke to a wide range of subject matters, imagery and media, assembling sources across time and space in his deeply layered artworks. Locke's work is part of many international collections, including Tate Gallery, UK; the Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA; Perez Art Museum Miami, FL, USA; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK; Queensland Art Gallery (QAGoMA), Brisbane, Australia; the British Museum, London, UK and many others. In 2022/3, Locke's Duveen Galleries commission The Procession was on view at Tate Britain, London and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK. The artist's work Gilt, for the Met Museum Façade Commission was on view through May 2023 in NY, USA.

 

Rob Lyon (b. 1982 Lancashire, UK) lives and works in Sussex, UK. A self-taught painter, Lyon has developed his own visual lexicon of mark making and motifs, composing landscapes from dots, dashes, triangles, and crosses to more referential repetitions of clouds, birds, and tree shapes. Expanding on Paul Nash's concept of 'genius loci' - the spirit of place - Lyon considers how we as visitors activate the landscape and how the landscape activates us. Walking, looking, and recalling this 'activation' are key to the process of making each painting. Pockets of light and airy space evoke an absence, omission, or clearing - Lyon has come to see these spaces as representations of portals that combine as a measure of consecrated land, giving form to the notion that the landscape is a temple of sorts. Lyon has had exhibitions at Warwick Arts Center, UK; Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona Spain; Adams and Ollman, Portland, Oregon, USA: Wondering People, London, UK; Gallery 94, Glyndebourne, UK; Blakefest 2020 and 2017, Bognor Regis, UK; the Warbling Collective, London, UK.