Tuesday Riddell’s work takes us down to the forest floor and a glorious insight into the world that captures her imagination, that ethereal nocturne when all cycles of life and death carry on with rarely a watchful eye. However it is also her unique craftsmanship in the ancient art of japanning that catches the eye. Tuesday’s first show was in our Emerging Talents exhibition last November and then at the London Art fair this spring. It is with great pleasure that we welcome Tuesday to Cork street for her debut show with Messums London.
Riddell’s work doesn’t tow the line between the decorative and fine arts, it dances back and forth over it. Her pieces play with these two often opposing worlds – the narrative driven and fantastical world of fine art and the world of applied arts through use of traditional methods and ornamental surfaces. Riddell’s work is rooted in the hours of dusk and nightfall. Worlds of detailed miniature, these scenes are evocative of dreams that do not shy from themes of decay and mortality. Through processes of japanning and chinoiserie these creations are grounded in dramatic tones of black and gold. The ornate surface of the works, together with the depth of narrative, are traversed together in a rare marriage of the imagined world and the decorated surface.
Tuesday Riddell graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting from City & Guilds of London Art School. She has concluded her Painter-Stainers Decorative Surface Fellowship at City & Guilds – the only Fellowship in the UK that provides specialist training in the craft of decorative surface techniques to ensure that endangered skills are kept alive and vibrant in contemporary practice, focusing on historic techniques such as gilding, japanning, chinoiserie and marbling.
