Lazarides Rathbone welcomes Charlie Isoe back to London, for his second solo exhibition titled In The Bad Bush.

Following his initial success, Isoe inexplicably chose to disappear for several years. Without discussion of his withdrawal from the public. He now returns to the gallery with a series of new, large scale works on canvas. Drawing from the isolation of Western Australia to his itinerant youth and lifestyle of abandon, Isoe quickly established himself as a pioneer in his field.

The tendency toward a level of abstraction has long been evident in Isoe’s work. Characterized by dynamic, sweeping brushstrokes, a gestural yet painterly application and frantic scrawlings in oilstick and charcoal, Isoe reveals and conceals his skillfully rendered figures. These new works delve further into abstraction. Increasingly a duality, a certain tension is present - a dialogue between figuration and abstraction.

Introducing a new element in his work, large photographic prints are the backdrops for recurrent themes of flesh, sexual acts, depravity and decadence. Isoe’s knowing brushstroke, describes not so much a projection of fantasy, rather a lurid recollection of lived experience.

Charlie Isoe has painted walls from his hometown of Perth all the way to Berlin. Skateboarding and writing graffiti across the continents, his work has turned heads on the streets of Australia, Thailand, Croatia, Bosnia, Czech Republic and Germany. Rich with the experience of his travels and tribulations, Isoe is now painting the walls of Lazarides Gallery. Utilising canvas and paint to comment on personal experiences and immediate social surroundings, the artist constructs a perception of social identity:

"We exist in the nervous bowels of Late Capitalism. In this age of disposable, plastic consumerism, I observe the late nights, the addiction, and the perverse. I am not a passive observer, but rather a reflexive participant. Where the disparate worlds of decadence and desperate necessity meet – the liminal spaces – those of consumption and addiction. I see the animalistic side of human nature, and it gives scope to the contemporary Human Condition. We are tourists in our own lives. We often miss the bits that are real."

Lazarides Gallery
11 Rathbone Place
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