Adam Stennett latest

Adam Stennett. Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans). 2008. Acrylic on paper, 30 x 44 inches

The paintings are elegantly composed and beautifully drawn but their outwardly staid appearance is a misdirection. Stennett’s real program is to reinvent the tropes of still-life and retrofit the genre for renewed contemporary relevance. To do so he returned to still-life’s earliest origins and the Netherlandish masters who gave weight and meaning to each piece of fruit, shank of meat, flower, bowl or bottle they painted, thereby making still life the study of character and narrative by other means. Likewise, Stennett presents objects as if they are to be read as evidence. He paints opium poppies, nutmeg kernels, or hallucinogenic morning glories, with teapots, grinders, strainers, bottles of solvent or grain alcohol. These are materials and tools for the extraction of specific euphoric agents that reside within common plants, seeds and tins of spice. These works are not so much still-lifes as painted recipes, precise visual demonstrations by which the observant may be initiated into all sorts of covert activities.

Traditional still-lifes often aimed to calm by suggesting comfort and domestic tranquility but Stennett makes work that undermines calm. This series encourages the imagination to conjure a monster: part vigilante, part amateur pharmacologist, someone knowledgeable and resourceful, but solitary, secretive, at odds with society and given to violence, self-medication and paranoia. In the end the work defies precise interpretation but it is clear that there is an unseen presence at the conceptual center of the exhibition. Collectively these works form a composite portrait of a contemporary anti-hero, as erratic and volatile as the images themselves are composed and contained. That we are never shown a face, only allowed to sense an elusive presence, makes the experience all the more unnerving.