Continental Shift presents new work by emerging artist Richard Besley. Following the success of his last exhibition at Chapman & Bailey these delicate and intricate compositions reveal a preoccupation with surfaces, layers and light.

Comprised predominantly of pastel on paper, these works employ a unique technique of building up and paring back multiple layers of pigment. Continental shift has emerged from an ongoing body of work in which patterns derived from nature are reduced to abstract forms. The new work, however, represents a movement from the ethereal to the material with the mist of the previous series replaced by the jagged lines of eroded landforms. Suggestive of large landmasses viewed from above, the work references the slow process of geographical change. Suffused with intense colour the work is suspended somewhere between the metaphysical and material. While referring to the natural world the images ultimately suggest an otherworldliness and become a metaphor for an internal emotional experience, a process of inner change.

‘The earth’s crust is constantly moving both vertically and horizontally at rates of up to several inches a year. When tectonic plates move the continents and ocean floor above them move as well. Continental drift occurs when continents change position in relation to each other. Scientists continue to debate what the forces are that propel the plates or whether similar processes operate on other planets.'