Pearl-wearing, chain-smoking grandmas, boys in white cotton socks buckled into T-bar shoes, and bouffant-haired beauty queens armed with bouquets: the haunting subjects of Amy Dury’s figurative works fizzle with nostalgia for days gone by.
The retro colour schemes help, too. From the bold shades of the sixties – think grape, olive green, plum and garnet – to the sunshine hues of the seventies, not-so-longago eras are called to mind with an everchanging palette. Yet fragmenting our perceptions are the unrendered facial features, unfinished bodily forms and loose flourishes of abstraction.
Abandoning the rules of realism in certain sections, the work of the Hove-based artist awakens within us a longing for a time and place that cannot quite be grasped in its entirety. It leads us to question the reliability of our memories. Many of us can
