Charles Williams' recent works see a flight from his usual depictions of people and rather focus on animals.
Williams' works try to explain animals through their relationships with us, exploring the belief that our encounters with them are always doomed to be one-sided and that the relationships are metaphorical, allegorical and analogical. This change of direction stems from feeling the need to create a presence without telling a story about the cultural web which surrounds human beings or at least try to escape it. Through the paintings, Williams questions whether he can escape this cultural web and how this new world would look.
Williams makes references to a William Blake drawing called A Vision: The Inspiration of the Poet (Elisha in the Chamber on the Wall) which appears on the page as a vision of a tiny room like a trompe l'oeuil, as if you were seeing the actual room cut into the page with magical goings-on inside. It is this feeling that he wants for these paintings – as if these odd creatures were just there, floating in the space that hovers in front of you.
His work is compiled from a dialogue between him in his studio environment, and the stories and ideas that keep him company in both his imagination and memory. This dialogue also references painting works that have left a significant hold on him. Joseph Highmore's Mr Oldham And His Guests, Annibale Carracci's The Butcher's Shop, Daniel Stringer's 1776 self-portrait are notable works that have done this for Williams.
Writer Evelyn Waugh described his friend Anthony Powell's fictional characters as ‘having an effect like an aquarium' - “One after another various specimens swim towards us; we see them clearly, then with a barely perceptible flick of fin or a tail they are off into the murk.” This certainly feels like an apt analogy to the process in Williams' painting works.
Solo Exhibitions in last ten years:
2022 My Animal Nature, New Art Projects, London Fields, London
2019 The Death Of Joe Skipping, Studio 1:1, Shoreditch, London
2016 Louise Bourgeois And Other Stories, Studio 1:1, Shoreditch, London
2015 Memento Mori, Lilly Zeligmann Gallery, Laren, Netherlands
2014 ‘Figure & Ground', _SURFACE Gallery, Shoreditch, London
2012 ‘Short Stories', Atrium Space, BAT, London
2011 Lily Zeligmann Gallery, Netherlands
Selected Recent Group Exhibitions 2015 - 2022:
2022
SpringbreakLA, with New Art Projects, Los Angeles
RWS at Horsham Museum and Art Gallery, Horsham
NEAC, Mall Galleries, London
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London
Urban Sublime, Coningsby Gallery, London
2021
John Moore's Painting Prize, Walker Gallery, Liverpool
Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries
Turner Open, Turner Contemporary, Margate
2020
Some New World, Charles Williams and selected work from other members of the British Council Fellowship to the Venice Biennale, Daphne Oram Building, CCCU (Sponsored by the British Council)
National Portrait Gallery Competition, London
Sunday Times Watercolour Competition
Wells Contemporary
2019
The Lost Paintings Of Herzog Dellafiore (with Daniel Devlin), Studio Golo Brdo, Croatia
Wash 2 (co-curated with Francesca Flowers), Angela Flowers, West Cork, Ireland
Urban Contemporary, Espacio Gallery, London
2018
Susak Expo, Susak, Croatia
Lynn Painter Stainers, London
2017
Painting (Now), Studio One Gallery, Wandsworth, London
2016
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London.
Two Potters And A Painter, Linden Hall Studio, deal (with Arthur Neal and William Plumptre)
Localism And Legacy, Fleur Gallery, Faversham
2015
A-genda, with Brian Chalkley and Jacqueline Utley, Studio 1:1, Shoreditch, London
Surface, _SURFACE Gallery, Shoreditch, London
Autocatalytic Future Games, noformat gallery, Woolwich, London (curated by playpaint)
Fellowships
2019 British Council Fellow at the Venice Biennale
Publications:
2022 Self, W et al Charles Williams, New Art Projects, London
2019 Devlin, D, and Williams, C. The Lost Paintings Of Herzog Dellafiore, Spiralbound Press, London
2019 Williams, C. Talking To Louise Bourgeois ed. 2, Spiralbound Press, London
2018 Williams, C Susak/Susak, Susak Press, London ISBN 978-1-9056591-5-9
2017 Williams, C. Talking To Louise Bourgeois, Spiralbound Press, London
Art Educator:
2016 - 2018 Programme Director, Fine Art, Canterbury Christ Church University
2015 - 2018 Senior Lecturer, Fine Art, Canterbury Christ Church University (fractional)
2012 - 2015 Sessional Lecturer on the BA(Hons) Fine and Applied Art, Canterbury Christ Church University
In Collections:
British Design Council, British High Commission in Nairobi, HSBC, Chevron UK, Westminster And Hammersmith Hospital Trust, Paul O'Grady, Angela Flowers, University of Leeds Library, Private Collections