The research for this solo exhibition presents a ground shifting break with my previous paintings by incorporating new materials and finishes that reposition my now familiar overlayed procedural style. By spraying through stencils onto decorators dust sheets, which are covered in the dripped debris from my regular studio activity, the utilitarian dust sheets have been repurposed and act as the grounds for overlayed sprayed stencils. The end results are unplanned and are comprised of impulses, riffs, accidents, false-starts and changes of mind which result in an optical complexity which take on a less polished finish. The final compositions of the overlayed motifs appear at first glance as bewilderingly dense in their abstractness but simultaneously perform as quasi figurative elements.
Although grounded in a material, process-based methodology that I have been active with since 2001, and which is constructed by combining poured, abstract configurations of transparent varnishes and opaque household paints with ready-made graphic stencils, the aim of these new paintings is to radically transform my known methodologies. This has been driven by a need to experiment with different materials whilst retaining a familiar, process-based and 'flat-on-flat' accumulation of layers.
The aim is also to present works which not only challenge my previous outputs, but which offer a different 'sensation' and set of compositional relations. My main two research questions therefore is 'what do these new paintings represent, and will they be witnessed or 'felt' by audiences both familiar and unfamiliar with my art and research career'? And, to what extent do these new works continue or contribute to my main research question around making and the screen.
The title for the exhibition is an ironic reference to the use of optical illusion in figurative painting, optical juxtaposition through form and colour in abstraction, and optical illusion on digital screens. It is also a nod towards, Frank Stella's study of historical figurative and abstract painting from 1986 called 'Working Space'.
