Tom Trevor, ‘Elastic Abstract’ Spacex Gallery, Exeter, UK, exhibition catalogue, 1999
(Mark Cannon, Michelle Fierro, Pascal Hervey, Phil King, Alex Landrum, DJ Simpson, Michael Stubbs)
Michael Stubbs pours household paints and varnishes onto MDF panels, in loose geometric configurations of restricted colour. Successive layers are allowed to spread according to their consistency, building up the illusion of tonal depth as well as a relief structure of paint. This, apparently ‘modernist’, concern with the properties of the material, however, is mitigated by the paintings’ glossy, luscious surfaces and shapely abstract forms which seem to recall the advertising imagery of the car and food industries, as much referencing the flow of foodstuffs as the poured process of Morris Louis.