A Rabble of Butterflies: Simon Periton

Galerist was founded in 2001 and realised the first show with the British artist Simon Periton. Galerist is now proud to announce the second solo show of the British artist with his expanded technique under the sponsorship of Citibank.

Over the past decade Simon Periton (b. 1964, Kent, UK) has been mainly known for his intricate paper cut-outs sometimes referred to as ‘doilies’. He draws inspritaion and borrows imagery from diverse sources, including Punk, art history, the landscape, flora and fauna, occultism, politics and religion. The edge to his subject matter sits in sharp juxtaposition with the delicacy and decorative quality of the work.

For his second solo show at Galerist, Periton is being represented with his expanded technique by retracing sculptural forms from his previous paper works and stenciling  them to glass. These new spray-paintings on glass use multiple layering and the mutation of one image into another to create a hypnotic collage of his particular visual vocabulary.

The new paintings portray strange metamorphic creatures who appear out of shadows, caught in spaces somewhere between landscape and domestic interior. Strange plant figures (part fashion, part flower arrangement) peer out from behind curtains, and mounted riot police stuck on a carousel must fight their way out of an overgrown organic trap. The show creates a society mediated by celebrities, chavs and royalty: A bunch of haemophiliacs raised by alsation dogs on a council tip.

These layers of dark, yet playful, images layer a selection of his previous doilies – Charger, Smokescreen, Beelzebub, Garden of Earthly Delights, Doilies, Anarchy, Flags, Hole, Domestic Violence and Scalpels- combined with new found images- Israeli soldiers clearing Jewish settlers, a Spanish flamenco dancer, royal portraits from the seventies, and a selection of old flower arrangements. The result is an increasing complexity of imagery, though Periton is still interested in the same themes: order and anarchy, imprisonment and escape, decoration and disorder, love and death.

Simon Periton lives and works in London and graduated from St Martin’s School of Art in 1990. He also had collaborations on hat design with Philip Treacy collections and recent commissions include public sculpture projects for Firstsite, Channel Four and the Victoria and Albert Museum.