Final week to see Nicola Bealing's exhibition 'Dead-man's Fingers'

The first of a two-part exhibition by Nicola Bealing comes to an end in Nine Elms this week.

At Matt's Gallery, Dead-man's Fingers is a body of work Bealing made during lockdown, "when total immersion in an alien world seemed a logical response to darkness beyond the studio door".

Imagined sub-marine landscapes are "seen as a place of threat", with a darkness that forms the perfect accompaniment to the Gothic horror explored in Chapter 2: The Borough.

Open at Matt's Gallery from March 15, The Borough presents a suite of new paintings Bealing completed with the support of The Bryan Robertson Award, which she won in 2021.

Open at Matt's Gallery from March 15 is the second of Bealing's two-part exhibition, The Borough

This second chapter takes its title from George Crabbe's poem of the same name, published in 1810, which through a series of letters describes the inhabitants and institutions of a fictional coastal village.

Letter no. XXII is the disturbing account of Peter Grimes, a fisherman who Benjamin Britten famously used as the basis of his opera 'Peter Grimes' in 1945 and from which Bealing departed on this series of work.

A truly horrible story in which a series of young apprentices Grimes takes on one by one meets a grisly end at his hands, Letter no. XXII contains a litany of brutality, child abuse, serial murder and mental collapse. But for Bealing, this darkness pulsed with imagery.

"The dark heart of the tale is that the people of the Borough are absolutely aware of Grimes' cruelty, neglect, bullying, abuse and eventual murder of his apprentice boys, but turn a communal blind eye doing nothing beyond mild tut-tutting," said Matt's Gallery.

In the poem, Crabbe writes, '.....some, on hearing cries/Said calmly "Grimes is at his exercise."

Crabbe is believed to have based the character of Peter Grimes on a real person. The story of society failing the vulnerable and pouring out remorse when it's too late is old and familiar and all the more chilling as a result.

Alongside a series of her signature small character studies, The Borough includes Bealing's largest individual works to date: Again They Come and Lost Hope and Anchor, each measuring 3 metres in height. Bealing felt it was important that these paintings take on a towering presence through their monumental size

Matt's Gallery added: "Typical of Bealing's work we find a push/pull effect in the paintings – the viewer is drawn in by colour and seductive paint work but then repulsed and slapped back by the imagery and subject matter.

"This is especially relevant in this body of work where the source material is such a fundamentally shocking account, when the distancing effects of time and fictionalisation are stripped away."

Dead-man's Fingers is open Wednesday – Sunday, 12pm – 6pm, through to 5 March.

Chapter 2: The Borough will run from 15 March - 16 April.