GACT Triptych

The idea is about the future of mankind and how we may evolve into a more synthetic being, through the intervention of physics and biology, that physically we will become similar to androids as depicted in science fiction, whilst our minds with all our emotions will remain unchanged as they have throughout our known existence of some one hundred thousand years.

The net result of all this theorising is the two canvasses taken from my previous paintings of emotion and experience. The paintings have been digitally altered to produce a pixelated image, as one might imagine seen though the eyes of an android. Out of the many experiments to find the images I required, I selected two vastly different scenes. A very Sci.fi. looking painting which came from an earlier painting called ‘Alter Ego’. The second from the experience paintings called ‘Reflections’. They were chosen for their diverse form, colour and composition providing me personally, with a complete landscape or perhaps dreamscape.

The video is a loop that was inspired by the movie ‘Bladerunner’, a replicant or android, at the moment of his retirement, twin dubbed over this is a selection of my poetry, describing the everyday worries, hopes and fears of an average middle-aged man.

Throughout it’s progression this project has inherited through the thought process of creating computer images, then re-portraying them as paintings, a process which directly relates with the human/non-human conditions that I referred to earlier, I have tried to continue with the general organic rendering of the canvas, by this I mean, my intention was never to produce a sterile perfect surface to the paintings as I wished to maintain some opportunity for chance, to build in an element of expression. To achieve this, I retained the textured surface inherited from the original paintings. This process also relates to the organic-synthetic juxtaposition of the whole programme.

The image of the retired replicant and the use of a triptych are aimed at a suggestion of a spiritual transcendence which I have hinted at throughout, both in the paintings and the poetry.

In showing the paintings alongside a video projection, I have lifted them from their traditional gallery space and re-sited them in an alien setting. The reasoning behind this was to stage an overall environment exposing the mood of my feelings of the subject. The paintings themselves were created with the lighting limitations in mind, although of course, as the plot has developed so has the evolution of the works. In harmony the triptych, music, the rainfall, and poetry is placed one upon the other, forming a sound and visual atmosphere which in turn mirrors my feelings about the predicament of man’s physical progress compared to his inability to shake off the fears, actions and reactions of his primitive beginnings.