PROJECT78
 

The work in this exhibition explores the unpredictable characteristics of materials and the attempt to find an authentic image. This tussle of forces creates a bewildering, exhilarating and maddening drama that is fully exposed in the making process. The images are direct and, necessarily, crude in order to exhibit conviction.

 

There is urgency in the application of paint and charcoal as a means of avoiding the intervention of stultifying aesthetic concerns. This approach allows for the enigma of painting to be exposed and a constantly revisited period of utter mystification persists. It is both a feeling one would want to avoid but ironically it is the very fuel for the creative journey.

 

The subject matter refers to domesticity: pots, cakes, flowers and vases and this might be considered banal but celebrates the non-hierarchical content as well as the rejection of artifice. Torn edges and patches pasted over redundant forms exposing the making process and reveals crude improvisation.  Everything involved in the image and its making has to go on trial and earn the right to exist. This includes the maker, the materials and the subject matter. Without this trial the event would not be credible or stand up in court. The analogy could be extended into telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.