Rex Southwick: To Distraction at Unit London

Introduction to Rex Southwick’s To Distraction

Rex Southwick’s latest solo exhibition, To Distraction, now showing at Unit London, takes visitors on a vivid visual journey through the architectural dreamscapes of the South of France. Drawing on the mythic appeal of the Côte d’Azur, Southwick’s paintings confront the seductive image of luxury and escapism with painterly rigour, rich symbolism, and a sharp eye for detail.

About the Artist

Born in London in 1997, Rex Southwick is known for his hyper-saturated paintings that investigate the relationship between image, luxury, and construction. His works often begin with photographs taken by builders and contractors, documenting the raw processes behind opulent homes in locations such as Mallorca, Los Angeles, and now the South of France.

A Dialogue Between Architecture and Escape

Borrowing its title from Dorothea Tanning’s 1962 painting Éperdument, meaning "to distraction" or "madly," the exhibition reflects Southwick’s own quest for creative focus during a residency in Jacques Couëlle’s sculptural “Landscape House” above the Bay of Cannes. His large-scale paintings present scenes of rare quiet: the off-season lull, moments before perfection, or the quiet labour required to maintain it.

These works span a century of iconic architecture, from Eileen Gray’s modernist Villa E-1027 to the radical forms of Antti Lovag’s Palais Bulles. Each painting carefully documents the friction between fantasy and functionality – between the Riviera’s myth and its material.

Painting the Unseen Reality of Aspirational Living

While many images of Mediterranean architecture present polished, curated exteriors, Southwick’s paintings look elsewhere. They capture “backstage” views — gardeners at work, incomplete swimming pools, and tools left in view. These symbols of maintenance and labour resist the utopian image often projected online.

Painting from hundreds of smartphone photos and contractor-supplied images, Southwick avoids stylised renderings in favour of dense, detailed compositions. Each work is grounded in his signature vibrant pink underpainting, a chromatic intensity that heightens the surreal, dreamlike quality of the scenes.

Influences from Pierre Bonnard and Beyond

Visual echoes of Pierre Bonnard, who lived just a few miles from where Southwick created the series, appear in these works. Bonnard’s shadowy silhouettes, cropped perspectives, and soft meditations on domestic life inspire Southwick’s handling of peripheral forms – gardeners, structural details, or looming plant life that subtly suggest stories beyond the canvas.

This quiet drama – often evoked through ambiguous lighting and unglamorous angles – makes Southwick’s paintings both visually arresting and conceptually rich. The work questions not just how we inhabit space, but how we project it, especially in a digital era where the idea of luxury has been flattened into something instantly consumable.

Contemporary Painting and the Myth of the Riviera

The South of France has long offered artists a dream of reinvention, from Matisse to Tanning. Southwick engages with this legacy critically, situating his practice within the same tradition but peeling back its surface. To Distraction captures the Riviera as a place of intense contradiction – dazzling light offset by dense labour, serenity framed by surveillance, and glamour shadowed by entropy.

Rather than merely depict these homes as monuments to taste or affluence, Southwick paints them as living structures – shaped, cleaned, built, repaired. In doing so, he reclaims a kind of authenticity often stripped away in the process of idealisation.

Why To Distraction Matters Now

In a time when escape is increasingly digital and idealised, To Distraction asks us to reconsider the function of physical spaces. Can a holiday home still be a true refuge in the age of social media and curated lifestyles? And what lies just outside the frame of that “perfect” view?

Southwick’s paintings refuse to answer definitively. Instead, they invite viewers into these ambiguously lit, meticulously composed scenes — asking us to look again, more slowly, and consider what we might be overlooking.

Southwick’s approach subverts the polished aesthetic of digital design culture, highlighting the dissonance between aspiration and reality. His works have gained international recognition for their critical reflection on architectural aspiration in contemporary life.