The Thousands

I’ve known Lisa King for a while now. I first met her up in the dance studio/sometimes art factory Paperhorse Studios. I once bought some of her art I saw in a basement pub. She did a few covers for my dud magazine. I even blessed her with a new nickname (‘Kinger’).

The best part about knowing any arteest for a while is that you get to dip back in and out of their work, checking out from time to time refinements in style that appear to you to be spontaneous and effortless. The secret, of course, is that there’s nothing effortless about artistic progression: it’s a painful, frustrating, monotonous process that takes bolting yourself inside a room with nothing but a pencil, wad of scrap paper, and 32-pack of bog roll to overcome.

For the past little while, Lisa’s been in this type of lockdown. She’s had a few shows but mostly she’s been hacking away at that sketchbook, slowly and incrementally getting somewhere – and Friday’s show represents a big payoff in the process. I suppose my only concern for the show, Gazing Heroes, is that it might be a bit of a fire hazard. I only say this because there’s a lot of wood involved: a smattering of painted longboards and skateboards, delicately constructed sculptures, and a tribal hut smack bang in the middle. Permeating the portraits of people and animals on show there’s a raw, earthy vibe; something haunting and primordial that I almost called ‘primitive’ before I heard Edward Said slowly begin to rotate in his grave. Whatever you call it, it’s magnetic – and another fascinating point on the Kinger trajectory for us to dip into.