Harrison Armstrong: Pigs and Whistles

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Ministry of Nomads is pleased to present Pigs and Whistles, an online exclusive show of new works by Harrison Armstrong (b.1999). Armstrong is a talented young painter based in London. He graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art with a BA (HONS) in Painting, with his degree show work selected for the annual New Contemporaries exhibition held at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.

He was also awarded the John Kinross scholarship to facilitate a period of practical study in Florence, Italy. In 2023 he was awarded another travel grant by the Goldsmiths Company. Armstrong drove across the American Midwest from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, exploring the small towns and vastness of rural America, making drawings the whole time which would inform these very paintings.

"By making drawings, and then oil painting on a large scale, I can articulate an inner adversity that I have been less able to describe in reality. I am realising that my painting is more than a representation of an internal or external world: it grants me authority over a desertion of meaning - a space to feel a sense of control over the indescribable."

"The work contextually and thematically explores control. Despite a physical authority over the materials, I still feel a tonal uncertainty within my paintings - the motifs, cynicism, and ambiguous visual narratives represent both the desertion of, and attempt to assert, control. By allowing access to my own interiority, my intention is to comfort rather than isolate the viewer. I want my paintings to project a positive acceptance of uncertainty and an awareness of the inevitable intervention of chance."