Research and Scholarly Activity

Chris Aggs - Testbed

Chris Aggs will be emptying the contents of his studio into the Otter Gallery for a week. His project is to try to understand the nature of his own visual perception.

In the paintings and drawings begun over the last 12 months he attempts to see the world without the mediation of lenses other than his own spectacles. The resulting landscape paintings adopt a format in which the height is less than half the width which typically requires turning the head and then resolving perspective anomalies in a kind of empirical paradox.  

The fragments presented in the gallery will represent preliminary studies, sketches and beginnings for a fundamentally realist project, but one constantly frustrated by the distractions of a turning world.

(photo copyright: Alan Lock)