Play is the base of every truly creative art expression.

(James Johnson Sweeney)

The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing.

(Bruno Munari)

The British artist and designer Mark McClure’s artwork stems from the urban landscape and representations of the built environment, from buildings and structures to lines on the road, the visual language we unconsciously absorb on a daily basis. McClure comes from a background in visual and graphic design and within his practice he successfully straddles disciplines and media his work is abstract in style with bold lines, sharp angles and strong colour palettes reminiscent of the English Vorticists. Through his multi-disciplinary practice, McClure is investigating what constitutes a painting or sculpture and how the artist can re-establish the lost contact between art and society.

In this his first gallery exhibition in London, Mark McClure has filled the gallery with playful artworks. Modernist style mosaics splinter before your eyes, laser cut from sheets of plywood the shapes are painted and reconstructed playfully into a two-dimensional picture plane. These dynamic paintings are not only concerned with the formal elements of line, shape and colour but their pure abstraction is suggestive of works by the Cubist Picabia and Bauhaus pioneer Moholy-Nagy.

They challenge our very perception of the gallery space, its perspective and its function. McClure moves fluidly and confidently between fine and applied art - blurring the lines between art, design and functionality in his pursuit to reestablish arts relationship to society and reintroducing the notion that “play is the base of every truly creative art expression.” James Johnson Sweeney