These works offer a further unusual shift in Willett’s practice. Since he left the Royal College he has experimented with a variety of media, from box-like forms in wood, to sculptures resembling bundles of densely packed lengths of firewood, painted in curious pastel colours. These have been made in series and have been exhibited together as a form of installation. The thread that links these series together seems to be an interest in experimenting with different materials and making demands on them that seem to contradict or distort their nature. This produces an element of the theatrical and make-believe in his work. The new series in this show share this quality. For these works, Willett is using canvas and paint, but the canvas twisted and torn and the paint applied coarsely, with colours merging into each other. The different series he has produced are also linked by an interest in re-imagine works of a earlier time; as the <Avenue> series (displayed on ArtLab) seemed to revisit modernism’s interest in geometry, so these works capture the attitude of the rococo. With the flowers so gaudily coloured but fading they also suggest some of the sensuousness and decadence that we associate with this period too.

Fearful Symmetry is on at the Studio 1.1, 57a Redchurch Street, London E2 7DJ until 25 October. Also included in the show are Tom Owens, Graham Reid and the sculptor John Summers. Contact ArtLab for more information.