Matt Huynh: Asperatus

Overview

I often wish I'd done more Latin. Anyone who had could explain much more elegantly that the name of this show refers to being roughed up by turbulence and is a term for a newly classified kind of cloud, and they would also be able to talk knowledgeably about the bones of the creatures displayed in the gallery here rather than just mumbling "osseo-blar-blar-whoa-that's-BIG". Huynh's new series - all ominous and with the subconscious looming through the wet-and-dry finished charcoal and gesso illustrations - will be brooded over by an elephant and a whale skeleton as well as by arty types on the one night the works will be on display.

The images on display are urban in stylistic vocabulary and dreamy by virtue of their familiar unreality: everything is recognisable, but something is a little off, with a vague sense of threat coming through the impossible spaces and proportions of the scenes and their disengaged, childlike inhabitants. There's an allusive, pre-conscious feel to the symbolism here that is very well served by being put in the Skeleton Gallery context of explicable monstrum and scary storms.