Jealous encourages you to dive, headfirst, into our upcoming group exhibition ‘Swimming Pools’. A swimming pool, which can be pristine and serene or aggressive and feral. Exploring public or private water; they simultaneously deliver the yearning of glamour, the challenge of competition, the seduction of youth and the promise of sunshine. In fact, few things evoke summer better than the swimming pool, its cool blue water offering a respite from sweltering heat. Pools are used in literature and film as symbols of hedonism, seduction or danger, which cross over into the mainstream ideals, especially for Brits where they are forged into sign of luxury. The variety in structure, size, location and atmosphere of the swimming pool has inspired artists for generations.

The master of the swimming pool is undoubtedly David Hockney, but since his iconic 1960’s series, many artists have been inspired to revisit the theme, including Ed Ruscha, Elmgreen & Dragset and countless more. The swimming pool was already a central concern of celebrity photography and ‘beefcake’ images, but Hockney’s exploration of it in his major paintings of the 1960s and early 1970s encouraged a more adventurous artistic exploration of the theme.

This exhibition brings together contemporary artists who seek to revisit the theme and create their own take on the genre of the pool picture. Sometimes the movement of flowing water offers an opportunity to experiment with almost abstract arrangements of curve, translucency, and dynamic form. Sometimes the atmosphere of the pool creates explosions of colour and vibrancy, recreating the mood and pure joy it can bring.

The exhibition will showcase existing and new works from Aaron Juplin, Adam Bridgland, Andrew Burgess, Anka Dabrowska, Bench Allen, Ben Eine, Broken Fingaz, Charlotte Windsor, Angry Dan, Dario Illari, David Shrigley, Gaurab Thakali, Hwa Seon Yang, Jia Chaun, Lena Goodison, Lucy Gough, Lucy Smallbone, Ornamental Conifer, Richard Denne, Rose Blake, Tom Adams, Tyler Spangler and Yigi Özden. With each artist exploring the genre of the pool picture across a variety of mediums including original drawings, spray paint, photography and painting, the exhibition will also include exclusive limited edition prints fresh from Jealous Print Studio.

In the swimming pool pictures, I had become interested in the more general problem of painting the water, finding a way to do it. It is an interesting formal problem; it is a formal problem to represent water, to describe water, because it can be anything. It can be any colour and it has no set visual description.

( David Hockney)