Dig: Harry Spike | Curated by Eva Karkut-Law
Cob Gallery presents Dig, the debut solo exhibition by Harry Spike curated by Eva Karkut-Law.
The title Dig refers to the physical act of digging, which is rooted in the landscapes of the Peak District, England, where Spike was born and raised. Its ever-changing terrain, folklore, and history are recurring sources of inspiration for him. Stone circles and Bronze Age burial mounds are scattered across these rolling hills, bearing witness to centuries of human intervention. Place names lend titles to Spike’s work, such as Hob Hurst’s House and Dove Holes, sites once shaped by excavation now function as visual and conceptual backdrops within his paintings. The show’s title also references Carl Jung’s “digging method,” a meditative approach to exploring the unconscious through guided visualization, where a person is encouraged to traverse through doors, tunnels, and caves to navigate inner psychological landscapes. Within Spike’s practice, these physical and psychological forms of digging converge. His work reflects an ongoing excavation of place, memory, and inner experience, populated by figures that both rest on the picture plane and bleed into the landscape: crouching, kneeling, and reaching toward the earth, encased in caskets or being prepared for burial.
Spike states, “Rather than being a premeditated focus of inquiry, themes and motifs of digging gradually surfaced throughout the process. As I began to realise the direction the works were asking me to go—which happened to be back up north, to the landscape in which I was raised—I allowed it to grow, giving permission for this imagery to enter new pieces.”
There is a distinct narrative element to Spike’s work, he takes inspiration from personal experiences, local myths, his dream journals and even snippets of overheard conversation. By painting or drawing aspects of these stories, Spike isolates and focuses on the themes and imagery of his own life. He also takes visual language from art historical narrative based paintings like Early Renaissance altarpieces and the murals of the Ellora and Ajanta caves. These combined narrative elements lend a storyboard-like quality to Spike’s work, drawings that when viewed sequentially provoke the eye to seek a linear narrative that ultimately remains elusive. Instead the works operate through a crossing over of time and experiences.
Materials and surfaces are pushed and played with by Spike. Using gouache, ink, pastel, acrylics, and oils on paper, board, and canvas - he employs a process of addition and erasure to create a gradual build-up of form, light, and color. Layers of paint are applied and then scraped off leaving a ghostly wash of colour. Conte crayons are used like watercolors and paintbrushes like colored pencils, resulting in a creative practice firmly rooted in drawing.
Spike’s sexuality and queer identity are deeply embedded in the work he produces, becoming particularly evident in pieces such as Halve It, Then Halve it Again and After Piero. The latter reimagines the composition of Piero della Francesca’s The Resurrection through a distinctly queer lens. The male figures are depicted nude, repositioned in more relaxed, intimate poses. By reinterpreting one of Spike’s biggest artistic influences, he engages with art history by asserting a more personal and contemporary perspective on desire and identity. Spike says that if Halve it, Then Halve it Again is at the rave, then After Piero is at the afters, recovering from the night surrounded by new friends.
A similar tenderness is felt in Icarus’ Wheel, which is built up of thin layers of acrylic, created by scumbling dry veils of colour one over another. The work takes inspiration from the composition and subject matter of Herbert Draper’s The Lament for Icarus. A print of this painting hung above the fireplace in Spike’s childhood home. The original painting of the muscular, semi-nude young man carried latent homoeroticism for Spike as a boy, establishing it as the first painting he truly spent time with and felt connected to. Icarus’ Wheel depicts a male figure viewed from above, lying on his back in a manner that creates a sense of vulnerability and intimacy between the subject and the viewer. The figure is now depicted with a smile on his face, radiating self-contentment. Perhaps this time he has not fallen to his death, but has landed with both feet firmly on the ground.
Eva Karkut-Law (b. 1998, London, UK) earned a BA in Fine Art and Curating from Manchester School of Art in 2021 and now lives and works in London. Previous exhibitions Karkut-Law has curated include Half Pints, Full Talent at the French House in 2025 and Im/Material at The Chapel in St Margaret’s House in 2024.
