The Curious Duke Gallery is located just a few minutes walk from Old Street station on Whitecross Street. As I step through the doors, I’m instantly hit by a wave of paint fumes. There is someone sitting behind a desk, she welcomes me in. The walls are covered in paintings.
Sam Peacock is a 38-year-old London based painter. He isn’t afraid of bold techniques as shown at his current exhibition “Fractured”. He has adopted plates of steel as his canvas, and plaster as one of his main materials. Plaster cracks and fractures during the heat process. Using other different everyday food products, such as coffee and sugar in addition to toxic chemicals, Sam imitates the process of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, turning this destructive process into a piece of art.
“I’d studied the methods of hydraulic fracturing in the build up to the show and before I’d began creating the work and wanted something similar to happen during the process of creation.”
Although one might ask – why would you decide to paint about fracturing anyway? Sam Peacock has actually a personal connection to it: “My hometown was cited as a possible destination for this [fracturing] to happen and I wanted to find out more about it, being a landscape painter.”
The exhibition features 48 pieces – each named after a possible fracturing location, which I think is a brilliant angle to take.
Before going to the exhibition and doing some research on his work and the exhibition itself, he appeared to be like any other abstract painter. Don’t get me wrong – abstract art is one of my favourites, but in order for the artist to be inspiring they have to have that something that differentiates them from all other artists’ paintings, whether this is aesthetically or philosophically.
After the exhibition I was pleasantly surprised at how amazed I was by the paintings. The colours were vivid, yet dark and mysterious at the same time, and the textures on the steel brought it all together.
Asking Sam whether his works are a protest against fracking, he says: “The works didn’t start out as direct protest to fracking, more of a visual discovery.” He also mentioned that fracking in the UK is not as straightforward as it’s made out to be, and in his opinion it won’t solve Britain’s own energy supplies, nor help in bringing down the bills.
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