** stars

 

In Rough Draft, you are first confronted with Bars and Blocks (Janky Hankies) (L) and (R), two woven banners that cascade from the gallery ceiling, reaching across the floor. They mimic the pillars they are hung between, but also a pair of socks, reassured by the artists footprints at their base. Opposing is Beavers Draw, Pigeons Paint, where rope made from ripped t-shirts suspend tree branches from rusty hooks. A decadently nibbled-by-beaver branch drops low like a phallus. Its representation becomes both the religious remnants of a strung out body and childlike forest structure. Adjacent is 9 Lives, a series of embedded green nonagons drawn directly onto the wall in chalk. Its texture mimics canvas, leaving the viewer searching for distinction between object and gallery. Off-kilter and geometrically inaccurate, it warps the spatial solidity of the gallery itself. Its parameters are set by the restrictions of the artists body, mirroring the bodily implications of the other works. In a second room are a series of works on paper. A more intimate attempt of bending spatial dimension: paper has been punctured, burnt, cut up, collaged and stitched into; magnets, leaves, plastic bags and detritus stuck on.

 

It seems the artist, through trace marks, has attempted to hang himself in space. If we suddenly melt into an alternate dimension we would see Samuel’s body, pulled, stretched and manipulated, filling the room with the atmospheric tension of a person. There is a clear investigation into the nature of painting, and a discussion into ideas of completion - 9 Lives will inevitably be scrubbed from the wall and all traces painted over in gallery white. Where work increasingly searches for a physical ‘finished-ness’, Samuel’s is successful in reminding us of the tactile body that built, although I fear the artist has reached their conclusion by way of trivial means. Most successful are the works on paper, though they too are regurgitations of a commonly investigated aesthetic.

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THE EVENING STANDARD

September 2025​​

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