New Viewings #46

An abiding theme in Jeffrey Bligh’s work is the physical and psychological notion of home; what form it might take, and where it might be. Throughout his work, Bligh has always tried to make paintings where the juxtaposition of shapes and compositional elements are kept to an absolute minimum. He is not very interested in the conventions of painting per se or formal arrangements within the picture or the use of photography to make ‚good photographs‘. He was and is much more concerned about what happens before a work is conceived and after it is completed.

In this wrap around work Surprises, made specifically for New Viewings, Bligh draws on many narrative influences and sources; found texts that he has carried around with him for over forty years whose origins have been lost; authors Karl Ove Knausgaard and Ohan Pamuk whose quasi-autobiographical stories dramatize the condition of everywoman and everyman; Franz Kafka and Elena Ferrante. The photographic portraits of Bligh as a young man are influenced by Jerzy Grotowski’s ideas for a Poor Theatre as he considers with alarm the thought of his mortality represented by a recent portrait. The whole scene is placidly observed by Bligh’s birth mother, Ivy, who he never knew, as he laments his separation from her, her demise and his own, to the strains of an approximation of Elvis Presley’s ballad Don’t.

Jeffrey Bligh was born in London in 1947. Jeffrey was adopted shortly after birth. From then on he was known as David Thorp.

​David Thorp studied briefly at Camberwell College of Arts and completed a master’s degree at Flinders University in South Australia. He subsequently had an international curatorial career. As an artist Bligh has returned to his birth name.

​Bligh and Thorp share some similarities though not in a fictitious way, everything Jeffrey does David does too.