Second Expression

28.09.2023 - 19.10.2023 

237 Hackney Rd, Hoxton, London, E2 8NA

Showcasing the works of six remarkable painters: 

Jamiu Agboke

Kate Burling

Mark Connolly

Lily Hargreaves

Emily Mannion

Anna Woodward

The ‘First Expression’ of The Cosmos was an exhalation of space and matter into being-there: a cataclysmic propulsion of all things into place and time. But before anything could truly come to life, The Cosmos slowed to a halt, as though something fundamental to being was missing from its first breath. For some time, nothing changed.

The Sun first rose on a pale grey surface; upon its first dawn, The World awoke to such a dearth that scarceness itself was not present. Much like the moon today, the dull ache of stillness pervaded our planet as a monochromatic sheet, stretching across rounded ridges and flat-scapes, extending far out into the yawning abyss beyond. The World’s surface was formed of grey rocks sunken in grey sediment, reflected across the grey horizon as a shapeless grey sky. Even the void beyond the sky was grey — hollow like a tongue interrupted. Matter and form were difficult to distinguish from one another, since everything was colourless, suspended in purgatorial stasis, lingering like an abstruse question waiting to be asked. This stillness percolated spacetime for what felt like an eternity.

But beneath this dormancy was a murmur that yearned to be enunciated. Without the absenceofstill,theeternalquietbecameunbearablyfractious.Before long, the stillness became a rumble; the absence teased substance; without any colours to drain into dullness, the all-pervading grey began to shine with brilliance. At some point, the screaming abundance of lack and lack of abundance was raring to implode, boiling with the caged discomfort of a claustrophobe locked in a phonebox.

In an instant (though it may have been millennia), the antediluvian era of muted neutrality broke into a flood of true multichromatism. That is, colour and lively activity became. Space and time were enveloped in ultraviolet, overwhelmed by the prickling embrace of colour.

At last, cascading from all points in space,
the SECOND EXPRESSION had taken hold of all things.