Alastair Gordon (b.1978, Edinburgh), is an artist based in London. This, the first major monograph of the artist's career, includes over 160 paintings, drawings and documentational photographs, along with notes by Gordon himself. The book introduces this accomplished and engaging new voice in British painting. Gordon's paintings bring the historic languages of genre painting and the quodlibet into a contemporary discourse that pushes the boundaries of realism, figuration and illusionism to focus on everyday moments. His work often elevates seemingly ordinary objects ? feathers, matchsticks, postcards ? allowing them to speak to wider concerns of beauty, truth, life and death. The documented works, produced between 2012 and 2023, include paintings made in oil or acrylic on MDF, wood, 'found' wood, gesso panel, paper, canvas and occasionally linen. Each is distinctive for its style and for the recurring motifs Gordon selects such as masking tape, paper ephemera and repeated, subtly different studies of the same subject. Gordon's texts describe how objects found mud larking on the banks of the River Thames, shoes from the London City Mission and rags and papers discarded from art students' studios have been depicted in paintings, incorporating the histories and stories of each item (and each person) into his work. The book also features recent works influenced by rural landscapes and parkland. AUTHORS: Alastair Gordon (b.1978, Edinburgh) is a London-based artist working with painting and drawing. Gordon received his BA from Glasgow School of Art and his MA from Wimbledon School of Art, London. His work has been shown in recent exhibitions at Aleph Contemporary and Cynthia Corbett Gallery, both London, and Ahmanson Gallery in Irvine, California. Julia Lucero is Associate Director of Nahmad Projects, London, where she has worked since 2016 across gallery and publication projects. She holds a Contemporary Art Market Master's Degree awarded by University of Warwick. Jorella Andrews is Professor of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London and a Trustee of the Association for Art History. She holds a PhD in Art Theory, Essex University and is the author of several books including Showing Off! A Philosophy of Image and The Question of Painting: Re-thinking Thought with Merleau-Ponty.
