Matt’s Gallery is pleased to present a new body of work by Milly Peck, recipient of the 2016 David Troostwyk Studio Award. The award, given each year, provides the recipient with rent-free studio for one year at Martello Street, E8, the SPACE studio where Robin Klassnik first opened Matt’s Gallery. Alongside this they receive mentoring from Klassnik and support from Jordan Baseman, Head of Sculpture, RCA.

Exhibited adjacent to Matt’s Gallery’s Bermondsey space, Peck presents a series of works made during the last year. Developed further on site in response to the exhibition space, LOUD KNOCK is an extension of the studio itself.

The title refers to a cue taken from an imaginary script hinting towards the anticipated arrival of a character or event. Largely taking form in routed sculptures, the work tussles with trying to function as both a flat, pictorial image and a three-dimensional, scenographic landscape. Banal actions or scenes hand-drawn from the everyday and the domestic sphere are comically exaggerated and transformed through a cartoonish filter. The frames enclosing and cropping these scenes withhold information allowing the space outside of these images to become the ‘gutter’. This term, borrowed from comic book terminology, describes the gaps between a sequence of panels where the reader must fill in the narrative blanks in the absence of text or an image.

Mischievous hands casting shadows and features of Tudor revival architecture stand in as playful signifiers to interrogate and parody the artifice inherent in the everyday. The mock-Tudor beam appears as both a recurrent motif and a structural device to frame the works. These beams become another mode of drawing, disrupting the images further their makeshift construction brings attention to the artificiality of the set-up. Caught amongst broken windows and over-spilling bins, the work’s human scale attempts to pull the viewer into a flattened world which both baffles and bemuses prompting us to reconsider and reimagine our perceptual and physical understanding of the things we use and consume.

The award is named after David Troostwyk, (5 August 1929–29 September 2009, RCA class of 1956, studying alongside Richard Smith and Robyn Denny). Working in an array of media that encompassed painting, text and sound, he produced works with an approach that was sparse, minimal and staunchly conceptual.

In 1979, Troostwyk became the first artist to be shown by Robin Klassnik, in what was Robin’s studio space in Martello Street, London. This collaboration led to what was soon to be known internationally as Matt’s Gallery, London. For over 37 years, Robin Klassnik has collaborated with hundreds of artists to help them produce groundbreaking artworks. These exhibitions and events have impacted significantly on countless audiences engaged with and interested in contemporary art.

Matt’s Gallery was founded as an artist-led, experimental platform: actively exploring the idea of the exhibition as a discursive space. The David Troostwyk / Matt’s Gallery Studio Award continues Matt’s Gallery’s commitment to artists. Milly Peck is the third recipient of the award. Borbala Szanto will be the fourth recipient, inheriting the studio from October 2017.

The David Troostwyk / Matt’s Gallery Studio Award is currently supported by the David Troostwyk Trust (Barbara Cavanagh, Olivia Cavanagh and Robin Klassnik), Matt’s Gallery, RCA School of Fine Art, and SPACE.

The Trustees would like to thank Patrick Morris for hosting this event.

LOUD KNOCK is commissioned by Matt’s Gallery and supported by space, RCA and Arts Council England.