The Skinny Showcase: Callum Sutch

Gallery by Lauren Strain | 08 Jul 2013

Showcase: Callum Sutch

With a BA in Fine Art, Callum Sutch graduates this year from Manchester School of Art – where, he says, he has “spent the entire time making a mess of the floor, walls, clothes and canvases.” He describes this mess as seeing him pass painting through processes, systems, roulette wheels, betting slips, conversations, writings and readings – culminating, for his degree show display, in a three-metre-square exhibition space illuminating this journey.

Sutch's degree show space presented projects from his final semester, and attempted, through the way the works were hung, to bring viewers closer to his studio and his painting process, while ensuring each piece had its own voice.

During his time at the School of Art, Sutch helped to found a promotions group, PISINpresents, along with three student friends, in order to present opportunities for himself and others. PISINpresents will be organising exhibitions and events in the coming year.

“In the past I have extensively used systems as a way to allow a painting to be created with no real importance on the end result. This way of working, despite being a very productive and valuable learning method, was dissatisfying due to the lack of control over the final image. This dissatisfaction gave me something to react against and in turn was the catalyst for the work I am making currently.

“I still feel that each painting carries its own contradictions of control and impulse, which is a manifestation of what I have learnt – through viewing paintings and reading critical texts – in opposition to what my natural aesthetic impulses crave. I hold the studio in high regard as a working environment and am very conscious of what happens in the studio, and what the contents of that room are when it leaves the other end.”

www.callumsutch.com
www.pisinpresents.com