NowHere Factual Nonsense

Jeff Gibbons’ paintings are like a form of visual syntax with a linguistic twist. He includes phrases culled from lyrics, art terms and sayings. Gibbons combines familiar expressions with everyday objects like cups, glasses, bottles, tables, flowers and birds. His use of paint incorporates subtle, at times blatant word play, underscored by humour. Although conceptually driven, they are very accessible and sometimes funny. The handling of paint shows an engagement with paint’s material qualities and dichotomies between figuration and abstraction. These are paintings to be seen as well as read, like the rebus and its image-word application (a is for apple). His use of paint sometimes directly echoes the subtle, deadpan humour of the expressions. Literary rather than literally by association, the titles describe a way of working and thinking through painting. How to solve This, THis THis THIS, WHAT This IS, This IS WHAT?, THIS make, HISTORY – Being So Cheerful Keeps Me Going and A PITCHER HOMAGE TO GENE BEERY.

This exhibition displayed recent work alongside work made some twenty years ago; together they become a total installation. It reflected Gibbons’ thinking that the space of paintings are part of an indefinable present, there is no past painting, all painting is present in the NoWhere Now here of paintings’ spatial encounter. They represent some of the complexities of his day-to-day experience in paint.


Jeff Gibbons work is in collections in the UK, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands and the USA.