Guy Allott until 16.12. F.A.Projects, London

The exhibition showcases a series of new paintings and sculptures by the artist, including the painting series Landscape Spaceship, which explore ideas of the primitive, innovation and the visionary.

Whimsical and intriguing, Allott’s works allude to the grand narrative of Western civilisation exploring the preoccupation with discovery, conquest and edifice that continues to hold such prevalence in contemporary society. The artist’s paintings and sculptures present a fantastical merging of the philosophies of science and culture that not only offer a critique of historic social beliefs but also has great resonance for an investigation of the contemporary.

The Landscape Spaceship series depicts a motley collection of anthropomorphic exploration structures that physically owe as much to 19th Century illustrations of innovative prototypes for journeys into the air and sea, as they do to early 20th century science fiction novels. The spaceships presented in these works are the antithesis to the slick high tech constructs of modern space travel: made from wood and metal, the structures are reminiscent of amateur prototypes of new inventions. Presented in anonymous but palpably foreign locales, the landscape of this other world references the historical landscape works of European artists struggling to articulate the alien landscapes of the New Worlds. The use of such a traditional visual language as a means to evoke the unfamiliar is further inferred in the very decoration of the spaceships themselves, as each ship is decorated with a quaint pictorial scene that is at odds with the barren and desolate surrounds. In constructing a representation of the unknown the comparison to the familiar is inevitable but ultimately misleading. It reveals more about the society it is communicating to than the subject itself. Guy Allott’s fictions then create a space, which enables a rethinking about the present as much as an investigation of the past.

For this exhibition, Allott also shows low-tech sculptural constructions in painted cardboard and wood, which echo the investigations of the paintings and introduce parallel subject matters, heraldic motifs and narratives which similarly conflate the historic and the futuristic.

Guy Allott is currently a finalist for the John Moores 24, at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Recent exhibitions of the artist include Jesus Loves You Cooling Spot, One in the Other, London; Jagsalon, Kreuzberg Kunstraum/ Bethanien, Berlin in 2006; Jagsalon, Kunstverein Ettlingen, Germany and Drawing200, The Drawing Room, London in 2005; and Guy Allott, Neil Hamon, Claire Pestaille, IZO, London; The Great Unsigned, Zoo Art Fair, London in 2004; and the solo exhibitions Summerpaintings, the miracle agency, London in 2001 and Ein Tag Stüle, Luna International, Berlin in 2000.