Press

Hanging on By Your Eyelids is an installation that purposefully lacks a focus; the many works are strewn about the gallery in what seems like a haphazard arrangement, creating heavy ADD vibe. Coombes subverts traditional British symbolism, using oil painting, landscapes, household objects and animals to produce unexpected results. Relics of the upper middle class are turned upside down: a Persian rug, for example, is coated thick with oil paint. Providing a menacing overtone is the voice from Coombes’ video Anxious Pie. Much like the work of Tony Oursler, with his haunted-mansion-like talking heads, the artist’s pie-covered face is the source of sound for his entire installation, and only when you look inside the sculpture do you see the actual video. Coombes’ mockery of the upper crust is both comic and slightly wicked, as it should be.