Martyn Cross Pride and Perserverance

Martyn Cross Pride and Perserverance Saturday 31st May- Sunday 20th June 2010 In Pride & Perseverance, artist Martyn Cross offers up a new collection of work for this, his first major solo exhibition. The Last Gallery acts as curiosity shop for the artist’s vandalised knitting patterns and also some unusual objects created especially for the show. The world created by Cross is at first glance strangely familiar as characters indulge in private, primitive passions in a seeming attempt to escape the mindless drudgery of their lives. Yet further scrutiny reveals a murderous undercurrent in the provincial lives depicted; the extraordinary in the mundane. Acting as seer in the creation of these beings, Cross methodically alters and adapts knitting patterns acquired from second-hand sources. Like a disillusioned teenager defacing a celebrity magazine, there is an attempt to leave behind the limitations of suburbia and succumb to another, altogether more mythical lifestyle. Crafted objects have been made in a deliberate move to imagine the type of stuff these characters might have in their possession, or may have decided to make in their spare time - voodoo offerings for an unknown god; gentle cross-stitch allegiance to a cultish sect; hobbyist activities of the damned. The artist’s birth town of Yate acts as some kind of odd talisman for the work, providing a symbolic gateway through which to explore this alternate universe (the word Yate is derived from the Saxon Giete meaning gate). A significant influence remains the highly individual people found in such places, to which Cross regularly returns. Martyn Cross lives and works in Bristol. Recent exhibitions include ‘Exeter Contemporary Open 2009’, Exeter Phoenix; ‘Jerwood Drawing Prize 2009’, touring show; ‘Drawing With Dolphins’, Crimes Town, London (2009); ‘Future 50’, PSL, Leeds (2008); ‘These Living Walls of Jet’, Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool (2008).