Sam Windett – Horses – The Approach, East London, April 2024 – I had been rather looking forward to this one, been rather looking forward to any kind of in-real-life art, it has been like my own personal crawling up the walls of the studio, a personal (mini) lockdown all over again and we all remember what that was like don’t we? Really wanted the first exhibition back (after all the eyeball slicing) to not be just another show and I do kind of like the quiet peaceful formality of the Approach. The exhibition looked like it was going to rewarding, shows at The Approach almost always are and it did look intriguing on line, it looked enticing on the gallery’s website and previous encounters with Sam Windett’s work have been more than stimulating, there’s something about those textures, the rich restraint of the colour, really was looking forward to this one.    

“The Approach is pleased to present Horses, a solo exhibition of new work by Sam Windett. Operating between abstraction, landscape and oblique representation, his practice is centred around a process that experiments with accumulating and reworking materials. Through eliminating and editing, modelling and remodelling, Windett allows for the successes and failures of the creative process to be equally crucial aspects of the work”.

Sam Windett’s work is a joy, it demands you walk into it, that you view it from the side, from the up, the down, that you step back, you step further back, you move in again, that bit over there catches your eye, the way it fits right up against that next bit, and that gorgeous bit of paint on that bit and that red rope and and is that fabric or how that bit works on top of that bit and “For Horses, Windett has produced a series of paintings that employ parameters inspired by the standardised design of horseboxes. Windett observed a formal consistency of the exterior size and shape of these objects, whilst the contents (if any) remained concealed and ambiguous. The paintings in Horses emerge from the duality of this repeated framework and the various possibilities of custom design and potential content”. The horsebox bit isn’t that obvious until you read it, I mean there are boxes and bits of rope and some of it looks strong and yet at the same time fragile, it is all about discovery, your discovery as viewer, his as artist, as painter, you sense that he has been discovering, an instinctive process.  

You are kind of lost in the actual paint, the actual rope, the actual colour, you don’t really notice the triptych(s), the repeated format, the canvases vertically divided into three, or the three pieces talking to each other, and yes I guess there is a sense of doors or divides or indeed horseboxes. You are kind or preoccupied, the motifs, the margins, why are those numbers there? And the colour, the use of colour holds you, that and the tactile sense and the urgent need to touch – I didn’t, I really wanted to – windows, wooded trays, moons, stars, the collaged elements, the surface disrupted, the cut outs, the reliefs, the relief of it all. Are they portals, are they meant to be read as portals? Am I reading too much?  Do love the painted coils of twine, do love this show, do love the way it engages, it is so so handmade, it is beautifully tactile, I really really need to touch these pieces, this is incredibly powerful, not demanding, not shouting at you, not commanding, powerful though and yes you do need to see this one in real life. 

Nothing here in Horses is obvious, nothing is demanding, it is something powerful, it isn’t ever throwaway, it isn’t just pretty textures, there’s no just about any of it, I want to say Horses is a joy but that in itself is throwaway and nothing here is, not even the bits of twine, I need a strong first show back after what seemed like far longer than it was, Horses didn’t let me down… (sw) 

The Approach is found on the first floor above the pub, 47 Approach Road, Bethnal Green, London E2 9LY, Access to the gallery via The Approach Tavern pub, there’s a brown door at the end of the left side of the bar that the staff may or may not feel like pointing out to you. The gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday (although some places say Tuesday) 12–6pm or by appointment. Horses runs until 11th May 2024

Previous Organ Approach coverage / Sam’s Instagram / website

As always, do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show..