"My thoughts turned to earlier memories: the squealing moth that wedged itself within the old man's inner-ear - undetected, bar the noise, for days; and my grandmother's terror of the dive-bombing Bobhowler that lurked at the top of the stairs.”

Hannah Maybank reveals a new body of mixed media paintings, with the contested subject of beauty in mind. Pieces on show portray implied moth shapes and cultivated English roses, with Maybank’s paintings celebrating a physical beauty found in the presence of the material in conjunction with the illusion of the image.

When Maybank left art college in the late 1990s, popular belief would have it that contemporary art was characterised by art-grunge: ephemeral, laddish, jokey, and certainly not interested in beauty. But it was exactly during this time that a beauty revivalism took hold. Artists and critics began to question the long held suspicion that to be interested in beauty was a sign of aesthetic conservativism. Arthur C. Danto, in particular, sought to restore beauty as a valid concern for artistic investigation. He noted that “beauty had almost entirely disappeared from artistic reality in the twentieth century, as if attractiveness was somehow a stigma”. If to be beautiful is contentious, Maybank’s radicalism is of a quiet sort. Her paintings cannot be dismissed as merely beautiful, for it is their beauty that makes them dangerous(© 2014 Alice Correia, excerpt from catalogue text).

‘Bobhowlers and Blooms’ will focus mainly on watercolour; its wayward nature set against the rigidity of pencil outline and latex cut-out technique. The works embrace the idiosyncrasies of different pigments and differing ways in which they move and react to one another. In pieces such as 'Kate' we see copper seeping out from the brilliant emerald of verdigris, while in 'Anne', cast iron particles slump and drag themselves out of a petal towards the bottom of the canvas. In contrast, ‘Adeline’ is a jubilant celebration of the colour blue. There is the intensity and fullness of brilliant azure set against a darker, smokier indanthrone.

This series of original works will include pieces based upon British Hawkmoths. With 'Bobolla' and 'Tussock' we witness two of Maybank’s largest watercolours to date. An illustrated publication accompanies the exhibition.

Hannah Maybank (b. 1974) is a British artist best known for the ripped and distressed surfaces of her three-dimensional paintings in acrylic. She graduated from an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 1999. Living and working in London she has been represented by Gimpel Fils since 2002. Her works is currently included in Back to Front; 40 Permanent Collection Gems at The New Art Gallery Walsall until 16 November, 2014, and Under the Greenwood: Picturing the British Tree at Gerald Moore Gallery, London, 29 March – 7 June, 2014.