Group show:

co- curated by David Ben White: ‘Working Space 2’ 15 May- July 20 2008, Lucy Mackintosh gallery, Avenue des Acacias 7, Lausanne, Switzerland. 

Solo show: 

'The Atom Age parts 1 & 2'  5 June – 5  July 2008, Studio 1.1, 57a Redchurch st. London E2 

In my work I attempt to forge a dichotomy between the paintings initial humorous appearance and the subject matters’ loaded references. The self-consciously cartoon-like style of painting in the portrayal of the characters, attempts to convey to the viewer a sense of lost innocence, heightened by the awkward appearance of the thick, gloopy impasto of the paintings’ surface quality. The use of repeated confectionary colours in the work affects a childlike simplicity, while the paintings themselves appear both crude and absurd not just in the subject matter involved, but also in the d.i.y aesthetic of the paintings’ construction. The complexity of mixing both high and low art off against each other is implicit throughout my work. This notion of seduction and displacement lies at the heart of the conception of each work. 

The pigeon acts as a central theme, appearing as the displaced stand-in for the human. The subjects’ obvious absurdity is heightened by their own sense of self-consciousness. Perhaps the paintings can also be seen to question the validity of the contemporary portrait painting today as a precarious and awkward creation.

 In “The Atom Age” series, spatial ambiguities begin to fight within the straight spatial setups of the paintings. Quoting various modernist languages of painting, particularly a post-cubist sensibility, this new series focuses its attention on incorporating multiple perspective points that disrupt the spatial reading of the work. As one begins to focus in, areas of coloured shape withdraw, overhang, and shift into strange distortions, as though the image itself is investigating its own two-dimensional possibilities. Alongside this, certain voyeuristic elements, like planetary or molecular eyeballs stare out from inside. Quoting a 1950s Science fiction/cartoon imagery, the work attempts to suggest a series of flawed constructions, appearing to be closer to a state of collapse than anything remotely iconic or heroic. Within this language, it was only a matter of time before the pigeon would re-emerge as the central character within this somewhat hysterical vocabulary.