Jude Rae has been titling her still life paintings SL followed by a number for many years. They are part of an ongoing series of explorations of objects, light and space. To describe them purely as still lifes is to pigeon-hole them too neatly into a classical genre. Traditional still lifes, especially the Dutch 16th-century Vanitas paintings, depict fruit, fish, stemware, flowers, candles and skulls and are awash with symbolism. The elapsing time of life, the endless tick tick tick towards decrepitude and death: food rots, flowers wilt, candles burn down or blow out, only the bones remain. Steering away from such heavily symbolic subject matter, Rae has instead employed a range of domestic objects: plates, cups and bowls in her earlier works and bottles and vessels in her later. Those familiar with her work will recognise some of them, such as the elegant high-necked mustard vase, the translucent green cylinder and the brown glass flagon. Newer items are added from time to time such as a cache of gas cylinders discovered at the dump and, here, the strangely banal plastic bottle that may contain unknown fluid of dubious origin. The placement of these objects affords endless fascination and the black form in particular, which she reuses time and again, throws what we know about scale into turmoil. Are the objects small, or oversized? Why are they placed so particularly, placed just so? The human brain finds connections; objects are grouped together in allegiance, the distance between them cosy or uncomfortable. And what of the surface they inhabit: cool, mottled, grey and reflective like 50s laminate? Is it tilting ever so slightly towards us? Are the objects suspended in an absolute moment of tension, moments away from sliding off the picture plane to land crashing at our feet? That Rae is a painter of consummate skill is obvious; the more we look upon the objects so painstakingly placed, the more we experience a disjuncture where their painterliness begins and ends. There is a delightful shimmer in her brushstroke that sets the pieces vibrating with a barely contained energy: a still life in constant motion. Emma Fox