Nick Goss brings London’s legendary Eel Pie Island Resort again to life

To take a look at a Nick Goss portray is to step into one other world, and it’s one in which you’ll be able to’t fairly discover your house. We might recognise acquainted parts, however they’re interspersed by a world which might be Venice, or London, set within the current, or maybe the distant previous.

It’s an elusive undercurrent which drives the brand new exhibition at London gallery Josh Lilley. Titled Eel Pie Resort, it encompasses a sequence of works impressed by the Eel Pie Island Resort, which was located in Twickenham, on an island on the Thames, earlier than being destroyed by hearth within the Seventies. The resort was a magnet for musicians, together with The Rolling Stones, who held a five-month residency there, David Bowie, Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd.

This eclectic, glamorous and infrequently lawless historical past intrigued Goss when he got here throughout it. By its transient nature, each nameless and intimate, the opportunity of capturing fragments of the human life that handed by proved irresistible.

‘I feel so many nice novels and movies are set in lodges, or on islands, as a result of it is this open narrative construction that you would be able to begin investigating, and make your personal in a really mounted follow,’ says Goss. Researching the resort revealed many images of the outside, however only a few from the within. ‘I’ve pieced it collectively from anecdotes of the Chelsea Resort and I went to the Eel Pie Island Museum, listening to all these tales from the individuals who used to work there.’ Pictures from their archives seem layered onto among the works, changing into little fragments of the particular individuals who inhabited the resort. ‘However I’ve cloned them – they’re distorted,’ provides Goss.

I’m reminded of Kazuo Ishiguro’s dream-like The Unconsoled when trying on the works, as they evoke the identical feeling of being trapped in a surrealist labyrinth, in an undefinable, irrelevant place and time. The work, which seize scenes – a drink, a stroll, a gathering – are richer in emotions than info.

‘I need all the portray to have an elusive high quality. There may be simply sufficient data that you would be able to detect a temper. These are all painted by the winter, and I really feel like there’s a sultry, wintery really feel.’ Seeing the works within the flesh, you discover they’re epic in scale, a acutely aware alternative which speaks to the immersion of the narrative. ‘Over the past couple of years, I’ve scaled the works up, doing a little portray on paper to see what works,’ says Goss. ‘As a result of I take advantage of the identical brushes and paints that I might for the large work, I feel they have a freedom – the brushes are too huge, virtually, and it’s actually efficient. You are simply actually coping with form and kind.’