My paintings explore our snowballing detachment from the real world within a visual culture of ever increasing simulacra. The scenes that I depict have surrealist qualities, drawing on the aesthetics of the dream image and collage, and they are largely the product of virtual spaces and mediated imagery more than any directly observed reality. I montage painted imagery into the pictorial space, playing with the pressing media through which our visual landscape is composed.
These works are explorations of hypereality, representation, virtual imagery, mimesis and simulacra, and how the interplay of these things can be explored in the conventions of painting. I'm particularly interested in JG Ballard's writing and especially his ideas around mind as a state of landscape and inner-space, rather than outer-space, being the major frontier facing humanity.
My work has evolved from a kind of straight forward photo-realist style into a painting technique that plays with mimicry. Painting, in my view, has always been about fakery – about synthesising the world into a plastic space. It has little to do with transcribing direct observations onto canvas, instead it is a process of mimicking media, cutting and sampling.
My paintings explore our snowballing detachment from the real world within a visual culture of ever increasing simulacra. The scenes that I depict have surrealist qualities, drawing on the aesthetics of the dream image and collage, and they are largely the product of virtual spaces and mediated imagery more than any directly observed reality. I montage painted imagery into the pictorial space, playing with the pressing media through which our visual landscape is composed.
These works are explorations of hypereality, representation, virtual imagery, mimesis and simulacra, and how the interplay of these things can be explored in the conventions of painting. I'm particularly interested in JG Ballard's writing and especially his ideas around mind as a state of landscape and inner-space, rather than outer-space, being the major frontier facing humanity.
My work has evolved from a kind of straight forward photo-realist style into a painting technique that plays with mimicry. Painting, in my view, has always been about fakery – about synthesising the world into a plastic space. It has little to do with transcribing direct observations onto canvas, instead it is a process of mimicking media, cutting and sampling.
I’m interested in a subversion of the role of a painter of realistic imagery. The only truth to be found in my work is subjective - the paintings are of subjects that are usually either fake, don't really exist, or are impossible to see in the flesh, but that still have a collective reality amongst groups of people. They act as a pointer to the plastic, simulated space that we increasingly inhabit. I often use source material that is a bad copy of the ‘real’, such as a museum diorama or computer game. I’m interested in exploiting the falseness of painting and mediated representations, and investigating a kind of melancholy that I feel when confronted with the apparently total embracement our culture has for the virtual, the simulation, the construct.
Qualifications and training
2002 - MA Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art & Design, London
2001 - BA (Hons) Fine Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
Solo exhibitions
2014 - Counter Worlds, Futures Gallery, Cardiff
2013 - Mount Analogue, St David's Hall, Cardiff
2001 - Arc Arts, Arc Gallery Store, The Northern Quarter, Manchester
Group Exhibitions
2017 - Island of the Real, Gossamer Fog, London
2016 - The Cat Show, Paper Gallery, Manchester
2016 - Y Lle Celf, National Eisteddfod, Wales
2016 - The Human Condition, East Street Arts, Leeds
2016 - Art Copenhagen, Denkmark
2016 - Sound & Vision, Paper Gallery, Manchester
2016 - Semiotic Guerrilla Warfare part III, Dean Clough, Halifax
2016 - London Art Fair, Paper Gallery, London
2015 - [dis]Corporate Bodies 11, The Unstitute
2015 - artists@WAR, GalleryELL
2015 - The Manchester Contemporary
2015 - Art Copenhagen, Denkmark
2015 - Generation Loss, Paper Gallery, Manchester
2015 - KÖLNER LISTE, Cologne
2015 - London Art Fair, Paper Gallery, London
2014 - Exhange Rates, Paper Gallery, Sluice Art Fair New York
2014 - Manchester Contemporary, Paper Gallery, Manchester
2014 - 'Play!', Access Space, Sheffield
2014 - Cites of Ash, g39, Cardiff
2014 - Snow in Summer, Peek-a-Boo Gallery, Perth
2014 - Barnaby Festival, Paper Gallery, Macclesfield
2014 - Supermarket Independant Art Fair, Paper Gallery, Stockholm
2013 - Alter//Shift//Control, Bermondsey Project, London
2013 - Terraform, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Kansas City
2013 - Sluice Art Fair (with Paper Gallery)
2013 - Manchester Contemporary (with Paper Gallery)
2013 - New Lights Art Prize, Mercer Gallery, Harrogate
2013 - Trajector Art Fair, Hotel BLOOM!, Brussels
2013 - A State of Un-Play, Atelier 35, Bucharest, Romania
2013 - Waste Lands, Greenlease Gallery, Kansas City
2012 - Digital Romantics, Dean Clough Gallery, Halifax
2012 - Launch Exhibition, Paper, Manchester
2012 - Manchester Contemporary, Paper, Manchester
2012 - Outcasting: Fourth Wall, Various Venues, Cardiff
2012 - Welsh Artist Of The Year, St David's Hall, Cardiff
2012 - Y Lle Celf, National Eisteddfod of Wales, Vale of Glamorgan
2011 - Sho Home, Sho Gallery, Cardiff
2011 - Winter Show, Sho Gallery, Cardiff
2009 - Wood, Canvas, Steel?, Tactile Bosch, Cardiff
2005 - Makeshift, Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham
2005 - Sefton Open, Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport
2005 - Shelved, Octopus Gallery, Athens
2004 - Le Petit Paysage, Liverpool Biennial Independents & Comme Ca Art Gallery, Liverpool & Manchester
2003 - AAS Sci-Fi Double Bill, Various Venues, Birmingham
2003 - XTC Ga Ga, Century Gallery, Cremer Street, London
2002 - Group Exhibition, The Students Gallery, Wimbledon, London
2002 - Red Mansion Art Prize, The London Institute Gallery, Millbank, London
2001 - Fresh Art, Business Design Centre, Islington, London
2000 - Departure Lounge, 1st Class Departure Lounge, Terminal 3, Manchester Airport
Curated projects
2012 - Create, Observe, Perform, Alkovi Gallery, Helsinki
2011 - Virtually Real, Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds
2010 - Virtually Real, Blyth Gallery, London
2006 - Britishness, Cornerhouse, Manchester
2006 - Making Love To My Ego, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
2004 - Peep Show, Warsaw Gallery, Manchester
2003 - Show Home, Timber Wharf, Castlefield, Manchester
Residencies
2014 - Atelierhaus Salzamt, Linz, Austria
2012 - On-line Residency, The Unstitute, London
2011 - Residency, Cite des Arts, Paris
Competitions, prizes and awards
2013 - New Lights Art Prize, Mercer Gallery, Harrogate
2002 - Red Mansion Art Prize Competition, The London Institute Gallery, Millbank, London
