Jason Hicklin | The River: Part Two: Cometh Light

Whilst Jason’s latest show is in some ways a continuation of The River Part I, a return to the Thames and its immediate environs, it is by no means a re-treading of old ground. The city itself, in its perpetual state of decay and regeneration, has, of course, changed since 2019, but to anyone familiar with his previous London work, it is the development and refinement of Jason’s image-making that strikes us as the most dramatic difference.

As always with Jason, this body of work is at heart an interrogation of light: how it plays upon the surface of the water; dazzles off the edges of the increasingly abstract additions to the cityscape; permeates, shapes and colours the sky. Whereas previous preparatory walks were undertaken during the bleakness of winter, those from which this exhibition was generated took place in the spring. The most obvious upshot of this is that the images are less dark, the sky less foreboding – but more than that, they are, in their depiction of light, more subtle. As Jason’s repertoire of mark-making has expanded, his juxtapositions of those marks has become more understated, so that while water, building and cloud are all rendered with discrete textures, the balance is so fine as to never threaten the cohesion of the view.