Painter John Blackburn to exhibit at University's Studio 3 Gallery

One of the most 'vital and exhilarating' English painters of modern times, John Blackburn, has a new exhibition opening at the University of Kent on 24 September.

Entitled And God Cryed, the exhibition will run at the University's Studio 3 Gallery until 14 December 2012. Admission is free and it's open Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm.

University exhibition curator Ben Thomas said: ‘The title of the Studio 3 exhibition And God Cryed refers to the Holocaust, and is also one of a series of very personal texts deployed in a group of 'black' paintings executed in a variety of materials including pitch (and exhibited here for the first time).

'In a way, these works see Blackburn returning to the concerns of his earliest authentic artistic statements, the Encaustic Paintings made in New Zealand in the late 1950s.

'Around this group of new pieces, and spilling out of the gallery and throughout the Jarman Building, a wide range of recent paintings will be displayed, proving that at 80 Blackburn remains one of the most vital and exhilarating painters working today.'

According to Blackburn his abstract paintings have their roots in the human condition: ‘I suppose, that's what my painting's about', he said, 'life itself is terribly dangerous, terribly cruel, terribly rewarding. All these things at once. This multi-faceted, wonderful jewel - which we all live with and die with - is there. We’re saddled with it, like it or not.'

The exhibition is organised in association with Osborne Samuel: http://www.osbornesamuel.com/

Contact: pressoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 12:43pm 13 September 2012