Michael Mansfield

Michael Mansfield finds material in the ordinary: toys, household objects, books, trinkets and whatever else happens to catch his eye. He collects boxes of things with no immediate purpose, keeping them just in case, as he puts it, he might need them one day. Eventually, some unlikely combination presents itself and an object becomes a prop, a character or the beginning of a story.

Still life has long provided Mansfield with a stage for these encounters. His compositions bring together objects that under normal circumstances would have no reason to share a canvas, yet within the carefully constructed world of the painting, they begin to make a peculiar kind of sense. A Mills & Boon novel becomes romantic love; Spider-Man calls to mind the compassionate person who rescues a spider with a glass and piece of card; a doughnut joins them because, sometimes, a composition simply needs a doughnut.

For Mansfield, composition is everything.

In New Paintings, however, the objects have begun to escape the confines of conventional still life. Where his earlier Still Life Stories largely drew upon objects that already existed, Mansfield has now started making some of his subjects himself. Squid and whales are fashioned from polymer clay, birds from ping pong balls and planes from folded paper. Once made, he gives them somewhere to go.

And so they swim, fly and inhabit environments of Mansfield’s construction. Cheerfully orange squid congregate in blue water. Pale whales rise en masse from a churning sea.

Elsewhere, pigs occupy strange architectural structures, while carrots, pencils and other familiar things find themselves cast in roles for which they were presumably never intended. The results sit somewhere between still life and theatre.

The exhibition also sees Mansfield return selectively to the figure. Here his affection for classical painting and sculpture comes to the fore. Art history has always been something he approaches with both genuine admiration and a mischievous eye. The grandeur and drama of classical mythology are treated with respect, but never so much respect that their theatrical – and occasionally camp – possibilities cannot be enjoyed.

That balance is central to Mansfield’s practice. He is a serious painter who does not insist that paintings behave seriously.

His technical precision and careful compositions invite a closer look, but humour provides the way in. Familiar objects become strange through unexpected relationships, handmade creatures acquire personalities and art history is gently nudged from its pedestal. Mansfield does not prescribe what the viewer should discover beneath these encounters. He would rather let the painting entertain, please, provoke conversation and encourage curiosity.

No grand declaration. No promise of reinvention. Just New Paintings: new objects, new arrangements and new little worlds, made with considerable skill and just enough mischief to keep things interesting.