“Insurrection and eruption in the urban landscape as the site of the reproduction of the code. At this level, relations of the forces no longer count, since signs don’t operate on the basis of force, but on the basis of difference. We must therefore attack by means of difference, dismantling the network of codes, attacking coded differences by means of an uncodeable absolute difference, over which the system will stumble and disintegrate.” Baudrillard (1993)

Baudrillard refers to the city as the ‘zone of signs, the media and the code [and that] it’s truth no longer lies in its geographical situation [but in the] enclosure in the sign form around us.’ This too can be said for the Information Highway, the World Wide Web, which acts only to further Baudrillard’s concept.

It is this form of ‘truth’ that my practice strives to negate, through the exploration of painting as process, it's perception and experience in the digital age.

Merging low-tech drawing and painting methods with high technological modes of reproduction, the screen-print-paintings are constructed into large, oppressive, abstract totems; their readability suppressed by graphic expression.

Through a dilution of fact the drawings focus on the physical act of creation. Immediate marks, or “signs” are continuously drawn, layered and re-drawn, discarded and reproduced. This frivolous and direct activity is reminiscent of the modern abstracted calligraphic; street ‘tags’ on Underground train windows or carriage bodies executed in the Magic Marker or spray-can effect.

Often working from self-portrait photographs taken at arms length, these drawings/signs serve to replace the anonymous name ‘tag’ with the visual equivalent.

The latter process of ordering, photographing, Xerox, collage and printing serve to further distance the graphic from the source. This formula of ‘puzzle-like’ construction of adding, subtraction, enlarging and reducing elements of the painting forces them beyond figuration, to a literal state where they begin to seek an autonomous existence.

Executed in a limited ‘greyscale’ palette the complex tangled lines that rest upon and within the deliberately flat, high gloss finish, suggest an illusory depth and plausible third-dimension.

These monumental, oppressive, abstract graphics are the result of extensive ‘narcissistic-nihilism’, wherein the visual ‘tags’ seek precedence and exist without relying on colloquial literary code.