Particular Abstraction and Seductive Obscuration
A fleeting glimpse is extremely alluring and abstraction highly contextual.
My paintings work within landscape proportions and composition without any representational elements, yet are suggestive of the flat surface marks that appear in the tradition of two dimensional landscape painting as detailed and static, or moving and gestural.
I create and layer imagery to be interpreted in different ways simultaneously. I make the paintings more abstract than my video work because there’s more time to look into them, but my aim remains the same: to trigger suggestion and memories without swamping interpretation. I don’t copy landscape, I make miniature landscapes of fixed pigment that the viewer will read as counter flowing picture planes, combining aerial and elevation views, playing with the scale between the fragment and the whole - from panoramic vistas to minute details in rock surfaces - fixing an emotional integrity at the point of convergence.
The process, irrespective of the medium, is always about adding and removing layers. Whether I’m working in the liquid dynamics of paint or live visual mixing (VJ-ing) I aim to avoid overly literal forms. The liquid movement of pigment and medium through the paintings is akin to the geological effect of water on real landscape: sedimentary. I start by preparing the surface of the canvas for the desired flow rate of medium and pigment, to form alluvial landscapes suggesting aerial views through to blurred romantic landscape elevations. The lack of brushes means the paintings are ‘particular’ in every sense. Achieving more detail with the materials used literally isn’t possible as I am fixing the particles of pigment. There is a degree of opportunism and systematized chance with the way I use paint – where it flows is where it goes, so surface resistance, medium interference, paint viscosity, screens and dams etc, determine the finished painting. The imagination of the viewer completes the process.
My music and visuals are currently published and distributed by Overlap. Overlap perform regularly at festivals and art venues including London's BFI, Tate Britain, Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Portrait Museum.
Select Performances/ Recordings/ Screenings/ Releases/ Exhibitions
1983/4: Parker, Press Conference, Crosschair, Drill Piece, Simulator, Michael: Subvert Videos /Young Contemporaries,ICA (under alias Elizabeth Bond)
1987: Art in Your Own Time (Music Picture Disc Re1 VHS) premiered at London’s ICA. South West Arts Award for 16mm landscape study. Arts Council Award for 16mm Shakespeare Cliff study. Videos held in permanent collection by UK Arts Council funded LUX organisation: - 16mm & video
Arrival, Middle Middle Beginning, Motor Cycle/Pylon, Plane Wave, Submarine Forest, Vacuum,Watertight
1989: Places That Dance (Music Picture Disc Re2 VHS 30mins) premiered at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, distributed by the LUX Centre, Virgin and HMV . Artist “Filmakers on Tour” awards
1990: Slow Garden (Music Picture Disc Re3 audio cassette 50mins) released on Rough Trade Records
1990: Submarine Forest premiere screening, Pompidou Centre Paris - part of the LUX touring exhibition
1992: Sprinkler Topiary (Music Picture Disc Re10 VHS 42mins) premiered at the Video Plastique Festival in France and the October Gallery, London. Distributed through Virgin and HMV
1990-1997: ongoing painting installs, central London TV and Film Post Production houses Glassworks, Rainbow, The Mill, Framestore, Moving Picture Company
1994: Open screening, Video Plastique Festival, France
1994: Submarine Forest screening, Melbourne Moving Image Festival
1995: Open (Music Picture Disc Re12 VHS 26mins) screened at London’s ICA and the Big Chill Festival
1996: Domino Series painting exhibition, 142 Farringdon Rd, London
1997: Strange Cartoons painting exhibition, BBC TV Centre foyer, London,
1997: Corporate commissions for Lexington Post, London W1 and The Mill, London W1
1999: Deep Space Angel audiovisual installation premiere, Nehru Centre, Mumbai
1999: Overlap formed with Anna McCrickard as a platform for music, electronic art and music industry/festival activities including single screen videos,VJing, audiovisual screenings and installations resume here
2000: Overlap 9 audiovisual installation, Britart Gallery Tomorrow Gate exhibition
2003: 48 Small Paintings exhibition 291 Gallery, London. A series of 11” square oil on boards
2003: Upstream screening, Hamburg International Short Film Festival / ICA VJ Shorts Festival
2004: Discovery Dock East foyer, 6’ 6” squ corporate painting commission, luxury Docklands development Canary Wharf, London
2004: AAF New York, Landscapes, paintings on Canvas.
2005: Discovery Dock West foyer, 6’6” squ corporate painting commission, luxury Docklands development Canary Wharf, London
2007: AAF New York, group show oil on aluminiums
2007: Xscapes DK Projects, New York, group show oil on aluminiums
2008: Parallel Place,Todds Gallery, Hastings old town. audiovisual installation, oils on canvas
2008: Victoria & Albert Museum, London: "French Connection Friday Late: Cold War Modern”
2008: Piccadilly Nites British Film Institute, London. Audiovisual performance using footage from EA Dupont’s silent 1929 classic “Piccadilly”
2009: Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust award received for painting acheivment
2009: Belgravia Gallery Mayfair, London. Abstraction group exhibition - new paintings
2010, 2011: Belgravia Gallery, Mayfair, London - summer shows – new paintings
2010: Anna May Wong: Stilled in Film National Portrait Gallery, London. Transported from her starring role in EA Dupont’s 1928 classic, "Piccadilly", into a landscape of gradually changing backgrounds - a slowly moving portrait in a gallery of stills. Premiere
2011: Anna May Wong: Stilled in Film screening, National Maritime Museum London, “Traders Unpacked”
Born 1959 Dorset, UK
Education:
1983: BA Honours Degree, Alternative Media Fine Art, Maidstone College of Art
1985: MA Fine Art, Chelsea School of Art, London