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IDYLL is Matthew Tickle’s second exhibition for Matt’s Gallery. Choosing again to use gallery one, he has taken a radically different approach to the space with this new work. In 1995 he directed the audience’s attention to one corner of the gallery by the placement and lighting of a single object, thereby accentuating the vast depth of the space. With IDYLL he has altered the visitor’s perception of the building as a simple container by introducing a repeated structural element. The 63 columns placed throughout the room oblige the visitor to negotiate a space which is no longer defined by the white cube of the gallery.
On entering the gallery, the visitor is confronted with a mass of columns which have been placed to imitate the natural growth of trees within a dense woodland - each is made to the proportions of the two concrete pillars supporting the ceiling. The work becomes animated as the visitor wanders around the columns. Reaching the light - initially only glimpsed at - they sense the vastness of the space and the landscape as it extends beyond the windows. Tickle’s considered and subtle dispersal of the columns significantly changes the feeling of the space, the light and its volume. His decision to remove the lighting system further emphasises the work’s relationship/connection to the landscape beyond the window. As the work is lit purely by the daylight entering the gallery from the series of windows along the rear wall, the atmosphere will fluctuate hour by hour, day by day and month by month, gradually becoming darker and more uncomfortable. After sunset two floodlights, mounted on the exterior of the building, illuminate the towpath and the canal beneath the windows.
Tickle not only succeeds in accentuating the height of the room by constructing the columns to reach above the beams to the ceiling, but also in slowly revealing the depth of the space and the landscape beyond as the visitor is drawn to negotiate a route through the densely positioned columns to the natural light in the clearing. The progression/journey from darkness to light, from a constricted space to an open vista, takes the visitor from a wooded landscape - evocative of a scene from a fairytale, subconscious fears or heroic adventures - and returns them to the familiar urban high-rise, mirroring the perpendicular forms of the installation.

This exhibition has been generously supported by The Henry Moore Foundation. For further information and visual material please contact the gallery.

Biography
Born London 1964, British. Lives and works in London Studied 1989–90 Slade School of Fine Art, London (Postgraduate Higher Diploma in Sculpture) and 1987–89 West Surrey College of Art and Design (BA (Hons) Sculpture) Solo Exhibitions 2006 Punctum and Nebula, Hull Art Lab, Hull 2004 Nothing will come of nothing, Wolsey Art Gallery, Ipswich; Semi-Rhythm, Whitechapel Project Space, London; What the eye can’t see the heart can’t grieve for, a temporary public artwork at Queen Mary, University of London 1999 Idyll, Matt’s Gallery, London 1995 Scrutiny, Matt’s Gallery, London Group Exhibitions 2005 Fiona Crisp, Matthew Tickle, Phillip Warnell, Matt’s Gallery, London 2003 Revision, Pitfield Street, London; Don’t start from the good old things but the bad new ones, Whitechapel Project Space, London 2002 The Green Room, Percy Miller Gallery, London 2001 Dead-wall Reverie, Five Years, London, curated by Valerie Sutton 2000 Tourist, site-specific project commissioned by Space Explorations, London [catalogue] 1998/99 Furniture, Richard Salmon Gallery, London, John Hansard, Southampton and Bluecoat Art Centre, Liverpool [catalogue] 1998 BACKSPACE, Matt’s Gallery, London 1997 In Residence, In Transit, The Stanley Picker Gallery for the Arts, Kingston University 1996/7 Plastic, Richard Salmon Gallery, London; Arnolfini, Bristol; Walsall Museum & Art Gallery, Walsall [catalogue] 1996 High Rise, Space Explorations at 110 Euston Road, London [catalogue] 1995 Animale Domestici, Hollandstraat 20, Antwerp 1994 Tight, The Tannery, London; 1 million cubic feet, Space Explorations, Holborn Old Town Hall 1993 Mehr Licht (with Marcus Eisenmann), Goethe Institute, London; Hull Town Dock Museum as part of the Hull Sculpture Symposium 1992 Public installation at the Electric Light Station, presented by Space Explorations 1990 Work commissioned by the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London as part of ‘Whitechapel Artists Awards 1990’; Public installation at the Old Royal Observatory, London, presented by Space Explorations; Public installation at the British Rail Arch, Beck Road, London, presented by Space Explorations Scholarships, awards and residencies 2004 Cocheme Fellowship, Byam Shaw 2002 ESPRC Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Grant 2001 Calouste Gulbenkien Foundation Research Grant 2000 LAB Visual Arts Fund: Artists 1995 Arts Foundation Fellowship 1994 Rachel Whiteread / K Foundation Award 1991 Whitechapel Artists’ Award 1989/90 The Picker Fellowship in Sculpture at Kingston Polytechnic 1989 Boise Travel Scholarship Teaching (part-time) since 1993 includes MA Art & Architecture, University of East London; MFA Sculpture, Slade, University College London; BA Fine Art, Middlesex University; BA Fine Art, Ruskin School, University of Oxford; BA Fine Art, Norwich School of Art; Wimbledon School of Art, University of the Arts, London