Delta Field Grid

4 August - 6 October 2017

Presenting recently gifted works by David Prentice (1936-2014), this exhibition features 1970s large-scale triangular paintings referred to by the artist as "delta field grids".

A founding member of Birmingham's internationally renowned IKON gallery, Prentice was commissioned by the University of Birmingham in 1970 to create Pleiades, a series of grids on mirrors. This marked the beginning of a close relationship between Prentice, his artist-wife Dinah and the University; culminating in the gift of the three delta field grid paintings, several smaller works and Prentice's meticulously kept archive.

Since his early career as a founding artist of Ikon gallery, David Prentice’s approach to painting has moved between the abstract and referential, but certain forms have persisted throughout; the triangle “delta” shape and the “field grid”. The works shown here, made during the 1960s and 1970s, explore inherent tensions contained within these two recurring motifs, between order and disruption, minimalism and excess.