Bringing together ten artists from Japan, Great Britain and the United States, Sweetness & Light is an exhibition which responds to Takeshi Murakami’s notion of the ‘Superflat Museum’.

Artworks that are characterised by their cartoon-like clarity, their cuteness and kitsch can also be viewed as expressions of a deeper sense of anxiety.

Patrick Caulfield
The critic Mel Gooding has written of ‘the baldness of presentation’ in Caulfield’s work, begging the question of its’ meaning. ‘Three Sausages’ (1978) revels in its’ delicious absurdity. The deadpan style for which Caulfield is known contradicts any sense of innuendo.

Brian Donnelly
Working on the streets of New York, Donnelly came to prominence in the mid 90s with a series of bus shelter advertisements subverted by the artist with a ghoulish skull. Donnelly has also worked with the Japanese toy manufacturer Medicom to produce work which bastardises the
much-loved figure of Mickey Mouse.

Machiko Edmondson
The practice of painting hovers between emptiness and desire in the flawless sheen of Edmondson’s canvas. For this exhibition, ‘Golden Blue’ (2005) depicts the vacant stare of a freckled child, the composition cropped to the point of claustrophobia.

Matt Franks
The surfaces and shapes of Franks’ sculptures suggest the playfulness of a child’s toy, whilst the subject matter suggests themes unsuitable for childhood. These cartoon-like conglomerations have a pathos and sense of futility which goes beyond humour.

Brian Griffiths
The discarded objects of yesteryear are re-invested with a melancholic sense of comic-book heroicism in the work of Brian Griffiths. From large-scale installations, to fragile assemblages, Griffiths alludes to a loss of innocence from a time ‘when the world was young’.

Gerard Hemsworth
Hemsworth’s recent paintings tread a territory beyond the serious or worthy. Teddy bears and Bunny rabbits find themselves in precarious situations, humorous yet inducing anxiety. Emotions run through guilt and shame; these images are deadpan, dour and deceptive.

Paula Kane
Finely wrought, fanatically detailed, the landscape paintings of Paula Kane acknowledge an art historical visual language, confusing confections of seemingly disparate genres. Devoid of human presence, the viewer must wander through this scenery alone; a utopian vision of the wasteland.

Yoshitomo Nara
A key exponent of ‘Superflat’, Nara cuts through the Japanese love affair with ‘cute’ with a blunt knife. His animal characters are subjected to a gamut of alienated extremes, simultaneously tender and cruel. ‘Pup Cup’ (2003) depicts a cartoon dog, possibly dead, possibly asleep, possibly swimming, possibly drowning, in a cup of pale blue liquid.

Cindy Sherman
Sherman continues to provoke redefinitions of crassness and taste with her self-styled photographs of female protagonists. ‘Untitled’ (2003), as always, depicts the artist in the guise of an over-zealous holiday maker, sun-burned and seemingly in a state of shock. Are we having fun yet?

Daniel Sturgis
Sublime vistas, shallow yet infinite, calm yet disordered, are rendered through arrangements of smooth geometry in Sturgis’ most recent works. The artifice of nature is called into question as the viewer experiences the desire to re-arrange and complete, to flit between the microscopic and the universal.

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