“Painting is at an interesting crossroads in relation to digital culture and the media - I try to reflect this through the painting’s chaotic visual spaces.” (Michael Stubbs).

This exhibition contextualises my painting practice alongside my paper works. I translate my multi-layered painting technique into graphically transferred silkscreens, stencilled pencil drawings and collages that mix vibrant inks with bold stick-on graphic signs. These new paper works combine neon coloured shop window signs with stencilled, graffiti style spray paints that refer to the high street recession and continue my fascination with contemporary painting’s material manipulation of the flattened, immaterial space of digital media.

The paintings, which operate at the interface of abstraction and pop, are constructed by combining poured, abstract configurations of transparent varnishes and opaque household paints with ready-made graphic stencils. The repeated pouring, in conjunction with pop signs, form a physical process of sensual flat-on-flat layering that reveals multiple perspectives and optical depths.

The layering, which is consistent in whatever medium I choose to work with, is part of the fracturing process, the breaking up or ‘exploding’ of a recognizable image, a response to the multitude of broadcast and internet that seem to fill our world. Amorphous shapes intrude into the picture planes, fragmenting the surface; the physicality of the all the works presented are coming up against the pixilation of the digital image. Yet there is an overriding seductiveness; the perfection of the finish and the boldness of the palette alleviate the chaos of the visual explosion.