Decoy Ahoy

Date: May 2025
Exhibition/Show Type: Group
Media: Installation, Painting, Sculpture

Exhibition Description

A joint exhibition of work by John Plowman and Bob Billington, held May/June 2025 at The Cut

‘Decoy Ahoy’ presents a nuanced conversation between the paintings of Bob Billington and the sculptures of John Plowman. What began as a light-hearted working title evolved into a conceptual framework for the exhibition, rooted in the idea of the decoy — something seen, noticed and even deliberately misleading.

Unlike camouflage, decoys are visible, truthful yet possibly false they’re honest in this deception becoming suggestive of multiple readings. To that end the notion of the decoy is not the content of the works in the exhibition but acts as an entry point to engage in a conversation with the paintings and sculpture.

Billington and Plowman have consciously avoided a collaborative approach when creating their work for the exhibition intending it to independently occupy the same gallery space. A space whose distinctive diagonal steel structure plays a vital role in shaping the conversation between the work and the viewer. Whose movement through the space activates a spatial engagement with the works on display, a choreography of looking, leaning in, circling a constant shifting of attention that mirrors the works’ layered intentions.

‘Decoy Ahoy’ invites attention, movement, and reflection — not to explain, but to encounter.

If the word ‘Decoy’ leads you somewhere, let it even if, in the end, it’s just another decoy.