Jeremy Dickinson's main motif is his own collection of miniature automobiles, model cars, trucks, various buses ranging from local buses and school buses to double deckers, cranes and trains. These miniature vehicles are sorted by colours and makes and stored neatly in plan chests in the artist's studio. In the paintings, they are depicted in a variety of compositions: stacked, lined up, in a circle or individually. Presented with exacting detail, the cars seem to be given another life on the canvas by Dickinson's adept and elaborate brush.

Dickinson uses the word “documentation” to describe his artistic practice. The rust, chips and dents of each car appear on the canvas. Some cars have previously been left outside for years so are depicted as rusted and faded. The details inscribed on the bodies of the vehicles are the evidence of past play and the traces of memories. By painting them in detail, Dickinson suggests each miniature vehicle embraces stories and histories, both his own autobiographical one and anonymous ones of other previous owners of the toys. In the past, he has also made paintings of the bus liveries from specific locations and times based on photographs taken by transport enthusiasts. This “documentation” also tells the history of a community and demonstrates that functional public transportation possesses a rich history. In all of the paintings, the edited out and abstracted backgrounds invite the viewers imagination, just as a child must do the same when the toys used in the paintings were originally used for play.

Concept

This exhibition features two main groups of new paintings. The first group is from a series of transportation map paintings, which are constructed from model buses and toy building blocks. Inlaid “superballs” within the blocks indicate routes, such as the cross-town New York City bus line. The second is the documentation of his miniature car, truck, bus and train collection. It includes the paintings of the car stacks standing as bases for tower cranes and automobile billboards. Dickinson’s collection includes the toy vehicles of his childhood as well as the ones he collects as an adult from toy fairs and swap meetings. As he states that the paintings feed the collecting and vice versa, new additions to his collection always provide new inspiration. Also included in the exhibition are a small group of paintings from the “rail yard” series, which depict trains from the artist's collection, ranging from modern Japanese bullet trains to American 19th century pioneer steam locomotives. Also on view will be a small group of wall mounted shipping container and junkyard sculptures made using items sourced from model railway stores.

About the Artist

Jeremy Dickinson was born in Halifax, U.K. in 1963. He graduated from York College of Arts and Technology in York in 1983, and from Goldsmith's College in London in 1986. He lives and works in London.
He has had solo exhibitions at Fondazione di Ca La Ghironda (Bologna, Italy, 1998), Horsens Kunstmuseum (Holland, 2004), Gallerie Xippas (Paris and Athens) and many other galleries in Europe and the United States. This is his forth exhibition with Tomio Koyama Gallery since 2000, 2002 and 2008.