The source material for these works by Richard Galpin, whose studio until recently was located in the shadow of the Shard, are photographs of the vast construction projects, and glossy, gridded façades of the towers of finance still rising in and around the City of London. Galpin scores these photographs, cutting and selectively peeling back the emulsion surface to strip and reformulate the cool, sleek surfaces of these banking behemoths, revealing other structures and networks that seem to underlie them.
His imagery in the works, fragments of ecto-skeleton morphing into endo-skeleton, delineates both space and structure, appearing not to be just of "the skull beneath the skin"–the bones and bracing–but also of a hot-wired meshing of sinews and nerve-endings. There is a mixture of energy and raw power and yet intricacy and fragility here that seems something between steel girders and Spillikins.
