This exhibition’s three shows in one. Surveillance, reconstruction, demolition: the canvases trace a dystopian life cycle. It’s not immediately clear where one ends and the next begins, however, because Hempton’s thick brushstrokes hit the surfaces with a studied, low-information impasto. Building sites, traffic webcams, and a surgeon’s POV live-stream (!) mix in a mess of severed arteries.
Confusion is Hempton’s favourite trick. The panels play scale, time, and location but even the odd landscape in this show of odd-ones-out brings no conclusion to this winding storyline. Sense finally returns only outside the gallery, as does longing for the unruly canvasses’ promise.