Tobias Francis
Garage Graduate
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Traces (5…4…3…2…1…) Installation, (2021) 5 balls, 4 paintings, 3 handmade plaster casts, 2 paint buckets and 1 tennis racket, 176 x 167.5 x 25 cm
Awards
Bio
My work relates the physical nature of walls to painterly concerns of representing flatness, perspective, and permanence, influenced by colour field paintings. Oil paintings and assemblage works, aim to convey a sense of suspense, depicting moments before something climatic; akin to “there (being) no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it," as Hitchcock says. Performative notions of the fourth wall relate to the treatment of the illusory picture plane: paintings push a stage set aesthetic where the edges of each painting -like what happens behind walls- contain an anticipated form of action.
I have been awarded an RSA John Kinross scholarship, intending to use this research opportunity to broaden my interests in walls by retracing Florence’s ancient fortifications.
Bluebird (2021)
Oil on canvas, 170 x 120 cm
I'm Scanning Things I Can't See, (2021) Oil on Canvas, 152 x 127 cm
Traces (5…4…3…2…1…) Installation, (2021) 5 balls, 4 paintings, 3 handmade plaster casts, 2 paint buckets and 1 tennis racket, 176 x 167.5 x 25 cm
Little Englander, (2021) Oil and pencil on board embedded with wooden painted arrow, earplugs and handmade photogram mounted onto England flag, 61.1 x 43.6 x 25 cm
No Show (European Super League), (2021) Oil and collage on canvas, 170 x 115 cm
Midnight Harvesting (2021)
Oil on board, 22.5 x 18.5 cm
Midnight Harvesting was made in response to a combine harvester whirring at night in the field next to my house. You could hear it, but not quite see it or what it was doing to the land. This provided enough interest for me to make a painting, imagining the harvester’s moving parts. Broad brushstrokes of blue collide in nuanced tones and the colour scheme made me think about delft blue tiles and processes of reproduction and how this relates to mechanisation in both harvesting and the making of ceramic tiles hence the decorative corner motifs.
Reference photos which informed Midnight Harvesting.
A4 collage (2020) that informed Little Englander painting- made from drawing shadows under a pergola (2020)
Don’t Shoot the Messenger at Night , (2021) Oil, oil stick and collage on canvas, 36 x 51 cm
Carboard Combustion, (2021) Oil on board, 30.5 x 21.5 cm
Networks (2021)
Fixing A4 drawings and paintings around a repurposed table from my local tip, 243 x 122 x 95 cm
Networks, (2021) Oil on canvas with foamboard and nail edge , paired with oil on board backdrop with collage, rope, wingnuts, screw elements and wooden plank edge, 61 x 51 x 14 cm
Fictional Lands, (Lockdown 2020/2021 drawings) Graphite on 12 A4 sheets of paper, 128.8 x 68 cm
Chasing Rainbows, (2020) Oil on canvas, 100 x 57.7cm
Plus que l'Hexagone (2021)
Oil on canvas, 152 x 127 cm
Installation shots inspired by Martin Kippenberger’s Raft of Medusa series- titled, A Pilgrimage to the Shoe Shrine, (2021).
Acheiropoietic, (2021) Oil on board mounted onto handmade painted wooden frame attached with rope, 35 x 27 cm
Walking is Talking, (2021) Oil on canvas with handmade footprint paper and shoes, 76 x 51 cm
Shoe Shrine (Installation), (2021) Wooden and card arrows, handmade print, paintings and shoes fixed to plywood sheet, 151 x 61 cm
Hamartia, (2021) Oil on canvas, 152 x 127 cm
Lost at Sea (Diptych), (2020) Oil and collage on canvas, 100 x 140 cm
Tobias Francis
Garage Graduate
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