Nick Howard

Mahl-Sticks and Other Images
Photographs by
NICK HOWARD

March 7th - 30th April 2006
Gallery closed 10th-20th April

Private Views took place on:
Tuesday March 7th, 6.30 - 8.30
Thursday March 9th, 6.30 - 8.30
Sunday March 12th, 12.00 - 3.00

Viewing by apointment at other times.
For further information contact Jonathan Ross
by e-mail or phone 020 7370 2239.
Nick Howard’s photography extracts the subject from its context and gives the image a unique existence. These are details stolen from reality, sometimes recognisable as what they once were, sometimes morphing into abstraction.

Howard’s darkroom days began when he was eleven years old, four years after his first camera. By the end of the twentieth Century, he had become as familiar with Photoshop as he was with chemicals and light switches. For him, the digital divide does not exist.

In this exhibition, one preoccupation is the mahl-stick.

Mahl-stick also maul-stick
A long wooden stick used by painters as a support to keep the hand that holds the brush from touching the painting surface…

Nick explains:
“I was on the street, noticed an old-fashioned sign-writer at work on his stepladder, asked if I could photograph him. Later, the image which usurped the rest was of his hand holding the mahl-stick, a history of Richard’s work comprehensible only to himself. Over time, staring at that image, the stick became to me a totem, a wand, an undiscoverable mystery. I began to suspect that they might all have that quality. I discovered that they do.”