Neil Gall’s works may describe recognisable things, but his visceral, sculptural staging of matter - whether for capture in two or three dimensions - positions the viewer between the physical staging and his almost unbelievable reconstruction of it. They appear as if portraits of artworks, composed and produced with the abstract and joyful process of manipulating materials in mind.

 

The two works in 'Real Time' describe an object of both the studio and Gall's personal archive (the original 'skull' was made by his son some years ago), which has become a leitmotif in his play with sensory perception and expectation. The painting in this combination sets up the humble plasticine ball as if an object of great importance; the scale of the work, its deliberately grandiose-philosophical title and his perfectly observed description of it also corroborating the fact.

 

And indeed it is given the familial provenance. While the models of the object, cast in jesmonite and hand painted, defy all possibility that they aren't simply the well-

handled play things they purport to be. Gall aptly describes them as like Jasper Johns' bronze ale cans; a facsimile of assumption. In combination, they deliver this flip sensibility of being in the proximity of, and yet removed from, the reality of what we see and our personal, culturally informed understanding of its value.