Abigail Dudley: A Place After a Place | Alice Amati
Abigail Dudley took the title of this show, her debut monograph exhibition in the UK, from a short story by Gerald Murnane. He writes of time as place after place; of eternity as endless scenery, wandered through without mystery.
The place Dudley paints is New Jersey. The place I saw the work was London, on a soporific early summer Saturday afternoon. The places in the works are somewhere else entirely.
Her dusty, warm-toned landscapes are populated by blocky, contorted figures, all of them still. There’s a debt to Balthus in the deliberate artificiality of apparently naturalistic scenes. The show notes also cite de Kooning and Luc Tuymans, both painters of unreal figures, as influences. But the contortions of Dudley’s bodies are her own.
My favourite was Parting Ways, from 2026. A fantasy summer scene, laced with beautiful passages of pink, orange and gold. Her figures - here and elsewhere - turn their backs on each other. The disconnection is the point.
Abigail Dudley: A Place After a Place is at Alice Amati (London). 24 April - 30 May 2026