John Bunker reviews the recent exhibition Painting & Structure at the Kennington Residency, London. The show featured works by Daniel Sturgis, Mali Morris, Sophia Starling, Andrea Medjesi-Jones, Kes Richardson, and James Campion.

Bunker writes: “This show brings together an interesting mix of painters who tend to ‘play’ with the tension between crafted excess and severe reduction. Excess can take different guises though. One might immediately think of impasto with gusto for instance. But what dominates here, is extremely fine tuned attention to details, to surfaces, to materials, to the history of the medium, to the throbbing gristle called culture in which it all stews… But what is finally distilled after all this excessive boiling down and fastidious reduction? Well, that is the question… I think it is the art historical notion of ‘the grid’ as ‘structure’ that is the ghost at the dinner party to a greater or lesser degree in the work of nearly all of the artists gathered here…”