Redfern Gallery, 20 Cork Street, London W1S 3HL.  020 7734 1732 February 1st – 24th 2011 www.redferngallery.com

Arts Desk

There’s something hugely pleasing yet singularly disconcerting about the work of   Michael Vaughan and Lisa Lombardi. This husband and wife joint exhibition opens at the Redfern Gallery on February 1st and runs through to the 24th.

Sharing what has been described as a ‘creative dislocation’ in their work, Michael and Lisa bring a very focused, strange and selective view of the world to life in paint and sculpture.

Michael Vaughan’s arresting pictures are about the moment, the story. What is left out, the details that are presented and, more importantly, the ones that are missing, draw the viewer in. It’s an off-kilter view of the day-to-day stirring a sense of unease and rediscovery.

A glimpse of a moment, a side-swipe glance (as in the tennis player “40-15”) a rolling landscape laid out like a cloth, a door that hints at a hidden world. It’s an Alice In Wonderland vision of the normal, the mundane even, emboldened by huge sweeps of colour, flat surface plains and the artist’s almost fetishistic choices. These paintings disturb and compel, they hint at a much fuller and complex story.

Lisa Lombardi’s work shares a similar surreal vision but via a different route with a very different execution. Large wooden sculptures of the used and everyday - a peeled lemon, a pile of licorice allsorts - force us to readdress the familiar by transplanting it from its expected setting . These large solid sculptures , colourful forms of the instantly recognisable, become completely different entities. The simple familiar object has emerged phoenix-like into something tactile, bigger, bolder and very different, demanding a very different form of appraisal.

Lisa was born in San Francisco and majored in architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. In the mid 70s she met Mo McDermott, a talented artist from David Hockney’s set, who inspired her to the direction she now takes. Michael was born and brought up in Yorkshire. One of the infamous ‘Bradford Mafia’  he was at Bradford Art School with David Hockney, David Oxtoby, Norman Stevens and John Loker. He then went to the Royal Academy Schools later teaching at Manchester Art school and the RCA. His work is in many collections and both he and Lisa have previously exhibited in many group and solo shows.

The Redfern Gallery exhibition gives a shared platform to a combined body of work  that, in its dissimilarities but shared sensibilities, makes it a must-see pairing.