The third entity _{by Isabella Smith}

In 2022, friends and collaborators Sam Walker and Chloe Summerhayes began swapping unfinished paintings; works they considered to be unresolved or failures. These once dormant paintings, now activated in the hands of the other, merge two distinct voices to create a series of uncanny works that blur and bleed from one image to the next.

Hotel California, on at Nine Fathom Deep until the 22^nd of October, is part salon des refusés (exhibition of rejects) and part transient hotel. It deals with possession and the ability to adapt, demonstrating what can emerge out of an intuitive dialogue in the language of paint on canvas.

The paintings stretch from mythological figures, interior spaces, and wide-open landscapes to animals, ritual grounds, and dream-like visions. “We’re both magpies when it comes to collecting imagery”, Sam says. But greater than the subject matter is the eerie tone that all of them carry. “It just seemed to happen in some iteration with every work. There's something about the combination of both of our choices and their resulting styles that ends up in some feeling of unsettledness.”

When swapping artworks, there were no limits on how Sam and Chloe chose to tackle each work, using narrative, form, style, colour, composition, and subject all as potential starting points.

Tensions emerged between Sam’s soft and sometimes invisible brushwork compared to Chloe’s expressive and somewhat crude brushwork. Both artists were forced to work with colours they weren’t familiar with. “In many ways our differences in approach balance things out and create harmonies. Sam’s familiarity with landscape and creating a backdrop of sorts worked well with my tendency to focus more on the figure,” Chloe says.

After working for months and years in ways that were unnatural to them, an amalgamated self emerged, made up of past and present; of old and new decisions, thoughts, and processes. They describe it as the presence of a third entity. “Once we were deep in the process it didn't just reveal a lot about the other person – their visual hangups, their preoccupations, their fault-points – but also ourselves,” Sam says.

The artists occupy one another’s works and leave their traces. “Each painting we worked on was an opportunity to pass through a slightly foreign microcosm,” Chloe says.

The transience is reflected in the title Hotel California and in the decision to use partitions and isolate parts of the gallery with garnet-red curtains. Because the range was so extensive, “we ended up with a real variety of works that don’t always necessarily fit with others”, Chloe says, noting that the partitioning creates “the ideal environment for these works to be in conversation with one another.”

“As painters we are used to being – or at least have the illusion of being – in total control of what we make. This project turned that on its head. I think it was a really good exercise in learning to let go and surrender more to what’s in front of you.”