Step into the dreamy world of Nick Goss’ Eel Pie Lodge

To take a look at a Nick Goss portray is to step into one other world, and it’s one in which you’ll’t fairly discover your home. We could recognise acquainted components, however they’re interspersed via a world which may very well be Venice, or London, set within the current, or maybe the distant previous.

It’s an elusive undercurrent which drives the brand new exhibition at London gallery Josh Lilley. Titled Eel Pie Lodge, it encompasses a sequence of works impressed by the Eel Pie Island Lodge, which was located in Twickenham, on an island on the Thames, earlier than being destroyed by fireplace within the Seventies. The resort was a magnet for musicians, together with The Rolling Stones, who held a five-month residency there, David Bowie, Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd.

This eclectic, glamorous and infrequently lawless historical past intrigued Goss when he got here throughout it. By its transient nature, each nameless and intimate, the opportunity of capturing fragments of the human life that handed via proved irresistible.

‘I believe so many nice novels and movies are set in inns, or on islands, as a result of it is this open narrative construction you can begin investigating, and make your individual in a really mounted observe,’ says Goss. Researching the resort revealed many photographs of the outside, however only a few from the within. ‘I’ve pieced it collectively from anecdotes of the Chelsea Lodge and I went to the Eel Pie Island Museum, listening to all these tales from the individuals who used to work there.’ Images from their archives seem layered onto a number of the works, turning into little fragments of the particular individuals who inhabited the resort. ‘However I’ve cloned them – they’re distorted,’ provides Goss.

I’m reminded of Kazuo Ishiguro’s dream-like The Unconsoled when trying on the works, as they evoke the identical feeling of being trapped in a surrealist labyrinth, in an undefinable, irrelevant place and time. The work, which seize scenes – a drink, a stroll, a gathering – are richer in emotions than information.

‘I would like the entire portray to have an elusive high quality. There’s simply sufficient data you can detect a temper. These are all painted via the winter, and I really feel like there’s a sultry, wintery really feel.’ Seeing the works within the flesh, you discover they’re epic in scale, a acutely aware alternative which speaks to the immersion of the narrative. ‘Over the past couple of years, I’ve scaled the works up, doing a little portray on paper to see what works,’ says Goss. ‘As a result of I take advantage of the identical brushes and paints that I might for the large work, I believe they have a freedom – the brushes are too huge, virtually, and it’s actually efficient. You are simply actually coping with form and type.’