Johnny Izatt-Lowry
In Something Else, Somewhere Else, in Somebody Else’s House, Johnny Izatt-Lowry pulls at the threads between what we are and what we perceive ourselves to be.
We do not always know ourselves. Among myriad modern stimuli, we flounder in our perspective. We strive for consistency, but find what we say at odds with what we do. What we feel, at odds with what we think. Of the many people it is possible for us to be, we swim in uncertainty as to which we should be, which we will be. One of the great effects of art is its potential to resonate through this noise, to establish a clarity in which we are able to glimpse ourselves, not only for what we should or will be, but for the version of ourselves we wish to be.
In his latest solo showing at the Cooke Latham Gallery, Johnny Izatt-Lowry searches for such clarity amongst perspectives from his own life — those remembered, misremembered, imagined, and desired — the resulting works a fleeting view of some inner truth, but one obscured through smoke, underwater, in static. The varied perspectives that brought us here are still evident, the inner conflict those perspectives begat are baked deep into the canvas, but each picture stands as an unapologetic whole. ‘Yes,’ they say, ‘I was this, these many things; in some respect I am all of this still. But I am also more.’
Still Life on the Kitchen Table at Night (2026)
There’s a tangible feeling of process. Works are constructed, as much as they are painted or drawn. Rough linen is soaked with raw pigment in crisp lines and austere geometry, every aspect considered, every tone and hue measured up against its neighbours, near and far. Izatt-Lowry, much like us, is working out the version he wishes to be as he goes. In Still Life on the Kitchen Table at Night, cubist nods demonstrate conflicting perspectives: a pencil placed impossibly, a magazine laid flat yet upright. A missing piece of fruit, its silhouette still prominent, calls to the difference between what we are and what we might perceive of ourselves. Varied elements comprising the whole are equally there and not there, some transparent, others disjointed — steam rises from a spout, but not quite; a model horse stands simultaneously opaque and translucent. Ultimately, we are not just one but all of the versions of ourselves. Our individual resonance is a harmony of many tones in unison.
Elsewhere, the perspective offered is more solid, but the inferences the same. Still Life with a Pair of Glasses provides perhaps the most direct view of its subject, but the subject here is a book, perhaps the artist’s notebook or sketchbook, Picasso’s Guernica on the cover. Here we observe a reproduction of a reproduction of an artwork that is itself subject to wildly contradictory interpretations, and we infer it to be viewed by the artist without the aid of spectacles. Do we ever interpret ourselves, clearly? Are we always myopic to our own intention? Then, the engrossing Cityscape — the city in question perhaps real, perhaps imagined, perhaps equal parts of each — shows through its jumble of urban constructions the different possibilities that are, or perhaps were, open to each of us. The sun sits low in the sky. Is our day at an end, or just beginning?
Izatt-Lowry’s work reminds us of the selves we wish to be. He shows us our journey there, the perspective shifts we should expect, the mistakes we might make, the changes we’ll undergo. He shows us that although these things are past, they remain present. We may need to vocalise our inner feelings to make sense of them, we may need to follow our actions through to completion to be convinced; he reassures us. Though we may find conflict in the multiplicities of ourselves, we are, each of us, whole. ⚭
Dan JohnsonJohnny Izatt-Lowry: Something Else, Somewhere Else, at Somebody Else’s House is open at the Cooke Latham Gallery, Battersea, London, until 21 May 2026.
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