Physical Painting

My solo show "Physical Painting" at the Fold Gallery London 2010 is part of my wider research that has been informed by a cross-disciplinary dialogue with archaeology for a number of years. The works included in "Physical Painting" challenge the conventions of the pictorial tradition in painting and align themselves with the central theme of abstraction and post-abstraction in contemporary painting. The project's cross-disciplinary collaboration has provided me with a balanced objectivity that my own discipline cannot offer. I have benefitted from exposure to the current thinking of practitioners at the forefront of landscape-based studies and the rigour and originality of their thinking has informed mine. My methods involve regular visits to excavation sites run by the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford and Art + Archaeology. This experience has has led me to recognise the inability of images to reveal the extent of our relationship to landscape. I continue to question the hierarchy and ordering of the senses that has resulted in the current dominance of image in contemporary British culture. I consider my works as a critique to this situation and they propose an alternative experience for the viewer. Current archaeological thinking has let me to see that a deep understanding of landscape and our place in it – a traditional theme of much British landscape-based art – is only possible if we are capable of moving beyond surface appearance and image.