PAUL TURNER AND ROBERT BARTOLO  

SPACE 2

Exhibition dates : 28 July - 9 August 2026
Opening reception : Wed 29 July 2026, 6:00 - 8:30pm

People and Places - Dug out of a rabbit hole.

People and Places - Dug out of a rabbit hole brings together a series of figurative and semi-abstract paintings that examine how people inhabit the spaces of modern life — from quiet suburban corners to imagined cityscapes. Each work captures a moment suspended between familiarity and uncertainty. These scenes feel both intimate and distant, portraying individuals within constructed environments that shape — and are shaped by — their psychology.
The exhibition explores urban psychology, social constructs, and the subtle tension between comfort and dislocation that defines contemporary existence. Landscapes and interiors are rendered as psychological spaces rather than literal ones places where emotion and memory merge with architecture and atmosphere.

This body of work investigates how we locate ourselves emotionally, socially, and physically within the built environments we inhabit. The paintings emerge from everyday observation: commuters lost in thought, quiet suburban streets at dusk, or the luminous afterglow of artificial light. These moments of stillness become mirrors of a broader human condition where comfort coexists with anticipation, and belonging is both fragile and deeply felt.
Each figure, landscape, or fragment of urban scenery is a portrait of a psychological state. Through color, composition, and spatial distortion, I aim to reflect how our environments influence our identities and relationships. The repetition of ordinary settings bus stops, housing estates, roadsides transforms them into emotional landscapes, familiar yet slightly displaced.
Our processess combines figurative precision with abstract intervention, allowing the surface to shift between reality and imagination. This tension mirrors the unstable comfort of modern life: we are always both at home and elsewhere, grounded yet expectant.
Ultimately, it is an exploration of what it means to find or create, a sense of home in a world that is perpetually in motion.