Philip Newcombe : COMPANY

2 May-14 Jun 2014

Overview

Newcombe often uses familiar and democratic objects such as lollipops, darts, folded up paper, thread, perfume, other people’s business cards and scent dispensers. By adding to or subtracting from these with subtle and well aimed interventions, the possible narratives seem ambiguous, contradictory, open ended and looped; revealing truths, half-truths, red herrings and trip-ups. Sometimes not all is what it seems to be. Although titles can describe an activity (’20 pints of milk dispersed throughout a city’, for example), there is rarely any photographic documentation of the event or a date or any other superfluous conceptual padding to justify the action. There seems no need. Instead they stubbornly hover in the territory between fact and fiction.