HOME

New works by Cally Trench and Nick Trench

The shared roots and familiar landscapes of home have led to two very different paths of expression for brother and sister Nick and Cally Trench. In this unusual joint exhibition - their first together - the artists display work which appears, at first, more striking for its dissonance than its resonance.

Working from a bird's eye perspective and using mapping techniques, Cally Trench's landscapes are tightly reined in. Here in the densely drawn work, are forests and water, gardens and fields, criss-crossed with roads and finessed with the detritus of modern life.

Look a little closer. The pictures are not what they seem: hidden between the trees and in the shrubberies there are dark secrets. Leafy lanes hide crime scenes. Rooftops and parked cars hint at incidents and accidents. Mystery abounds in Cally Trench's work, which is rooted in childhood memories and backdrops, as she explores the way the future rests on and in the past. She challenges the viewer to discover what is going on under the surface.

Perhaps the mystery in Nick Trench's work is 'What is going to happen next?' For while his paintings are deeply rooted in the natural world, the free forms and complex colours draw the viewer into abstract storms, where the fierce fluid brush-strokes hint at impending thunderclouds, mythical animals and bristling electricity.

Look again, and the masses become huge trees heavy with leaves, their potency weighing them down uneasily, even as they teeter on slim trunks tethering them, against crushing odds, to the frame of the picture.

The scale of the work and the explosion of lines owes something to Nick's early studies in geomorphology and landslides. Yet, the greens and dancing ochres will remind many of last autumn - much of the work was painted outside, not far from the Thames.

At first glance the siblings' work differs dramatically but both artists display links and ties to the past, a shared restless upbringing in suburban Surrey, which leads them to examine constantly their actual place in the world. Their true roots. Their true home. Or, the place they might want to call home.

Victoria Lambert, 2007

Cally Trench's homepage

Cally Trench • Nick Trench: HOME

Reviews and Responses