Artists: John Peter Askew, Phillip Illingworth, Maria Lalic, Michael Samuels, Michael Stubbs

Advanced Contemporaries II, is a group exhibition curated by the gallery and Paul Carey-Kent. This year’s edition brings together six artists whose work challenges conventions of representation to and which are enriched by their conversations with art history and contemporary culture.

The exhibition was conceived by Paul Carey-Kent to highlight and celebrate artists whose practices, spanning decades, are deserving of attention now, making this a counterpoint to all the prizes / shows / lists that are fixated on youth and/or the simple fact of having recently graduated from an art school. What, after all, does it mean to be ‘contemporary’? Is it linked to youth? 'Contemporary' is defined as ‘living’ or ‘occurring in the present’. The artists in this exhibition have been occurring in the present for over forty years, making relevant, materially fresh and visually exciting works around issues of historical formalism in painting and sculpture.

The two paintings I contributed are examples of recent works that include digital posters in relation to my usual techniques of combining poured house paints and tinted floor varnished with graphic signs.