NICK PEARSON uses, restores or re-makes the ordinary objects that surround us. He thereby allows us to regard them and their histories in a fresh way through plays between functionality and redundancy, or style and placement.

These once familiar objects are often already used, or ‘falling out of use’ and in their recuperation and re-presentation as art take on a strangely inappropriate quality. It is this wrong type which Pearson identifies and expounds as a clue to interpretation: on one level the work becomes abstracted, while on another a very cool eye remains on the object’s own story.

The work often wryly refers to other forms of art in its production and presentation – including minimalist sculpture and modern painting – sometimes using paint as a tactile even sculptural, rather than representational or decorative medium. Familiar coverings and references to furnishings and the built domestic space introduce a human element and evoke sentiments and meanings associated with the forms and surfaces of our immediate surroundings.

Pearson regularly employs low-value, impoverished materials: often making use of discarded corrugated cardboard, carpet off-cuts or ripped-out furnishings and fittings that, ceasing to be parts of functional units, become free to take on other, less fixed identities.

In a society that fetishes branded items that know their place, their market and their value, Pearson presents us with dysfunctional totems of dubious identity, and challenges our preconceptions of what is useful and of worth.

Norman Barnfather 2004

Exhibition Reviews

2001 Zingmagazine, New York (review by Angus Ivy). Issue 14, Winter

1995 Time Out, London (review by Sarah Kent).
June 7

1991 Time Out, London (review by Rose Jennings).
July 31

1990 Northern Arts, Cleveland and north east England (review by Sarah Hovington).
September – October

1986 City Limits, London (review by Mark Currah).
March 9

Published

2004 Wrote Turner Prize 2004, artists profiles, review of work etc, a website for Channel 4 to accompany the broadcaster’s coverage of the 2004 Turner Prize

2002 Wrote Turner Prize 2002, artists profiles review of work etc, a website for Channel 4 to accompany the broadcaster’s coverage of the 2002 Turner Prize

1999 Contributor (‘Masterclass’ section) to educational booklet to accompany Channel 4 Television’s series Watercolour Challenge

1989 Interview with David Ross. To accompany Gallery BICA, Brighton, exhibition

1989 Co-consultant editor and contributor (modern and contemporary art section) to educational pack to accompany TVS/Channel 4 Television’s series, Art of the Western World

1988 Devised and wrote The Workshop Artpack (for Shape London and London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham), a tutors’ guide to running art workshops/basic foundation in art and design in hospitals and other health and education centres.