Joshua Yeldham: River Song

There is a graphic intensity to Josh Yeldham’s latest works that is rarely – if ever – seen in contemporary art. This is the work of both an obsessive artisan and a potent visionary. This is the stuff of dreams made solid, carved impeccably, stroke by miniscule stroke, tethering the smoky regions of memory and mind onto a solid surface.

Each of us will see our own dreams here. We will try and grapple with why these images seem so immediately recognisable and then realise we have never seen them before outside of somnambulistic flights of fantasy. We will think of the iconography of Eastern mysticism only to realise that this is a ruse – it may be an influence but these images are very much Yeldham’s own.

Of course they are not paintings per se. But nor are they sculptures as we have come to know that term. Technically these works are truly unique, beautiful hybrids of craft and vision.

Technically they are works by a youthful master.

Excerp from River Music (2010) catalogue essay by Ashley Crawford