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Daniel Coombs makes installations which
cross the boundaries between painting and sculpture. Taking ideas
from cinema, cartoons and diagrams, Coombs incorporates objects
onto a painted canvas or wall, arranging them into lively pathways
and constellations.
‘I use the objects in my installations
to tell stories, but how the viewer reads the story is up to them.’
The artist produces associations through the combination of seemingly
useless and banal objects. The surfaces of his ‘assemblage
paintings’ are garish, almost claustrophobic, presenting a
myriad of visual puns, each one leading in a different direction.
The complex compositions of household objects and discarded toys
evoke feelings of domestic tension and psychological unease.
Faith and notions of spirituality are increasingly impressed upon
us from new and diverse origins often filtered through our television
sets. Hence Coombs’s salvaging of materials perhaps reflects
the tendencies of modern media to pillage philosophy (both secular
and religious) resulting in a rich and culturally diverse approach
to spiritual ideas. By meticulously arranging what would seem to
be random items, Coombs creates a series of poignant gestures which
reference both past and present notions of religion. These everyday
temporal items are imbued with biblical folklore. Exploring spirituality
from beyond the walls of the Church.
In response to the work in St Peter’s Church, Sacha Craddock
wrote:
‘Coombs painted two huge blue areas on both sides of the entrance
bringing the language of painting straight to the back walls simply
by using them to claim space. Radiating lines span across as a trellis
works its way upwards; Fred Flintstone’s face recurs, sometimes
painted over, as Coombs projects a whole view out of many individual
moments and details. Lines radiate from fixed moments, a familiarity
with paintings of the Annunciation suggesting a Renaissance greeting
or gesture suspended in the sky. A dolls house juts out, bath mats
in the shape of a foot flop over; the cheap is elevated here, literally.
A fixed view feeds in and out through the broken collection of elements
which are suspended between their past significance and their presence
as reused, reinvented elements within a much greater scheme of things.
This, combined with the constant cyclical presence of the recorded
church bells and flapping wings in Duncan Whitley’s sound work,
creates a seepage between expectations and reverie. The relation
between detail and overview is clear, and allows the process of
looking and listening to unfold gradually in the understood and
expected context of the Church.’1
1. Extract from text by Sacha Craddock commissioned for this publication.
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