CONTEMPORARY: Henry Hudson 

* Please see the Events page for details of 'A Prayer for the Procrastinaor', Henry Hudson's forthcoming show with Laurence Owen *

Henry Hudson has turned his back on oil paint in favour of plasticine.

His practice involves heating different coloured plasticine, then mixing it in the palm of his hand before transferring it, with his fingers, onto canvases of cross-etched plywood. Out of such child's play, such innocence and gloopiness comes the very opposite of childishness.

There's an odd, almost perverse lushness to what inhabits Hudson's canvases that make them look more like oil paintings than oil paintings themselves. There's a nod to Beckmann, a nod to Kippenberger, an unmistakeable sense of enquiry and a graveness of subject matter that would silence any detractor.

Most of Hudson's Biro drawings stick with the Britishness thing. The figures in them are often lifted directly from newspapers, from Country Life or Farmers' Weekly, from dusty books and periodicals, from Ol' Blighty being herself, undiluted, and they seem to be saying a great deal about our ideals, about our obsession with class and our tea-time spreads of toast-racks and crumpets. Though figurative, they are nearly always distorted and frequently troubling.

Henry Hudson studied painting at Central St Martins and graduated in 2005.