LONDON.- Tremors brings together a selection of new works set across a range of different media. Tom Hackney has sourced these from specific historical materials encountered in the process of making, researching and reflecting. The exhibition title is prompted by Bertolt Brecht’s recollection of a summer playing chess with Walter Benjamin in 1934 in Svendborg, Denmark. As Brecht wrote in 1936 when inviting Benjamin back to stay, ‘the chessboard lies orphaned, and every half hour a tremor of remembrance runs through it: that was when you made your moves’. This body of work addresses the tremors of historical material, considering the staging of different contexts as a reverberating point of exchange.

Tom Hackney regards Tremors as a work in progress. Despite having primarily worked and exhibited with paint, the artist locates his practise outside a conventional understanding of the medium. Hackney regards painting as both a working territory and a vehicle for communication, but does not necessarily define himself as a painter, prioritising the medium’s potential for translation over a more formal engagement with paint itself.

The dynamic between the eye and the mind features prominently in a number of Hackney’s works, particularly through the correspondence between painting and chess. In both arenas the notional idea of the game space is played out, both on the board or painted grid and in the mind. Resulting works marry the enclosed, self-regulating structures of chess and a precise, deliberately sparing application of paint.

Breese Little also announced their new gallery which will open for the first time on Tuesday 24th September, 6 - 9 pm at 30b Great Sutton Street, with a solo presentation of new works by represented artist Benjamin Cohen, entitled Thoughts of Terminal Refreshment.