There seems to be a healthy market for still-lives featuring kitchen utensils, frequently combined with flowers and fruit, which it is never possible to satisfy. The widespread appetite for this kind of work is further evidenced by the heavy infestation of red "sold" spots around the walls of Jane O'Malley's new show of painting and rugs.
The work seems to emphasise, above almost everything, the decorative possibilities of painting. What other content the pictures have seems to be largely concerned with the pleasures of travelling, and perhaps the fraught business of serious leisure. O'Malley frequently gives her images titles which suggest exotic holidays, making the pictures into oil-on-board wish-you-were-here postcards. Consequently, an otherwise unremarkable still-life becomes The White Jug, Orzola, while a large image with frantic field of botanical arabesques becomes Garden With Pepper, Madeira.
O'Malley works in a bewildering range of styles, even while holding tenaciously to the medium of oil on board. Sometimes she builds her painting upwards from an almost homogeneously-coloured ground and drafts on details of flora and garden features, while at others she cuts deeply into the board, or performs multiple passes of over painting, adding a delicate layer of sugar-frosting to her images. All this stylistic darting around demonstrates a degree of dexterity, but it hardly helps to dispel the impression of a certain aimlessness.
Closes November 15th.