Split Riviera present Eva Dixon’s inaugural solo exhibition, SCORE! opening this Wednesday 13th August 2025.
The exhibition features a dynamic cast. The Ipswich football team, WWF wrestlers, sex workers, a lone diver. Appearing on collectible cards sourced by the artist, these characters appear in control. Though the cards name real individuals, they often read as archetypal, exaggerated ideals of hyper masculinity or hyper femininity. Dixon has a deft way of framing paradoxes, literally and metaphorically. Always playful, she highlights that the more something epitomises heterosexuality, the more it becomes camp. Jock-themed porn, fetishwear and parties are examples of how gay culture appropriates sport. In the artist’s own football work, the Ipswich team recede and emerge from a surface of glitter-covered construction mesh. The treasured cards have been folded or clipped, sometimes rendering the men anonymous bodies: it’s material that’s Dixon’s star player.
In the 1960s, art historian and critic Leo Steinberg wrote of what he saw as a critical shift in painting, a ‘tilt’ in orientation. For Steinberg, prior painting had been ‘vertical’, meaning it was oriented towards a viewer standing upright. However abstract the painting, compositions were still directed head to foot. Steinberg believed artists such as Robert Rauschenberg had moved toward a different way of painting altogether — a ‘horizontal flatbed’. Horizontal painting resembles surfaces: ‘tabletops, studio floors.. Bulletin boards.. any receptor surface on which data is entered’. These kinds of works don’t evoke depictions of the real world, but our very processes of receiving information.
Dixon’s practice, like Rauschenberg, also escapes the confines of a two-dimensional picture plane, with works becoming a ‘receptor’. Drawing upon her family history in trade, her surfaces recall sites of manual labour, converging it with the visual languages of sex, gender and fan culture. Images or logos are applied with force; chained, clamped and penetrating the structure of each work. Dixon’s assemblages instil weight and dimension to the flat picture: she makes ‘things’ — picture or material — look corporeal. In Knock Out, the veins of plastic wrap enclose the flexed muscles of wrestlers. Stretched over, held taut and exposing their frames, Dixon’s works often materialise desire. Desire as a state of suspension. A subtle, unresolved tension of fabric that rivals the immediacy of the erotic image.
Words Anna Moss @anna__petrovna
Eva Dixon, SCORE! 14th August-13th September 2025, Split Riviera
Hackney Wick, on the canal (E15 2SJ) – Art Opening 13th August 2025 6PM– 9PM More information, including the exact location, will be shared online and on our Instagram stories.
There will be a sign out front and lights across the roof of the boat to help guide you to the space. (Additional images will also be posted on our stories to help you find us.) Over the course of the month-long exhibition, the show will move towards Victoria Park and Broadway Market, with weekly updates on our location. If you need more details or directions, message us or email: morgan@splitriviera.co.uk
When: opening from 6-9pm, 13th August (14 Aug to 14 Sep, Thursday to Saturday 12-6pm and by appointment) Where: Split Riviera, E15 2SJ (at the back of Grow Hackney) in a converted canal boat turned gallery (will be clearly signposted)
All photos by Eva Dixon © Eva Dixon
