Geoff Uglow: MMXIV

MMXIV is Geoff Uglow‘s (b.1978, Wales) fourth solo show at Connaught Brown.

With his spectacular new series of work, MMXIV, the artist has re-defined the parameters of contemporary British landscape painting. Over the course of one year, he has chronicled the changing seasons by painting metonymically a single colour for each day. Displayed in a calendar format, with twelve distinct panels, Uglow presents a strikingly modernist colour diary.

In its systematic arrangement of colours, Uglow‘s calendar echoes the grid-like compositions of Piet Mondrian. The mathematical sequence of the work conveys the fundamental order Uglow perceives in nature itself: ‘In nature everything seems so well designed and works so perfectly’. Yet, as in the natural world, there is a sense of chaos and growth as the thickness of the paint moves over the edge of each panel, giving the work a more softened, sensory quality.
There is also a deeply personal aspect to this piece. While Uglow has long been interested in ideas of the eternal within the landscape, this calendar imparts a sense that days and months pass. Capturing with colour the mood of each collected day, what we see is an inner landscape of memories. As Uglow explains, it is ‘an epitaph to days’. Similarly, he demands of the viewer a meditative response, as our eyes must move between one day and the next, piecing together detailed fragments to create our own landscapes.