Hot Things to Pet is local artist Martin Grover’s new show at the Woodfield Pavilion in a corner of Tooting Common. Martin’s work is many and varied. His paintings and screen prints include witty comments on life, cool and reflective scenes and landscapes where solitary figures are caught up in strange and bizarre stories, trompe l’oeil record sleeves from the 60s and 70s, celebrations of Brockwell Park trees and much more.
Hot Things to Pet is a new series of landscapes and seascapes. Painting from life, memory, drawings and photographs, he creates images of the world that are familiar yet possess a hint of surrealism where things are going awry. His work is playful but thoughtful; wryly humorous but with some darker, melancholic undertones about anxiety and isolation.
His more recent paintings – always the more serious side of his work – do have a sombre edge. Cool colours, everyday items in strange places and wide open, slightly forbidding spaces, create a series of elegant but unsettling stories. Martin is an artist of many dimensions. Much of his work is lighthearted and nostalgic. But he also has some serious things to say.
Get along to Tooting and enjoy his unique take on the world around us.
Hot Things to Pet runs until Sunday 29 September in Woodfield Pavilion, 16a Abbotswood Road, SW16 1AP. For further information about his work go to www.martingrover.com
