Dave Lunt: September 2008

Tuesday, 23 September 2008

Sefton Open 2008

Here is a pic of my work at this years 'Sefton Open' at the 'Atkinson Gallery' in Southport. As expected all the work was of an excellent standard and with over 2000 entries (more than this years 'Bloomberg New Contemporaries' and not far behind the 'John Moores') it was fantastic to get shortlisted.

Saturday, 6 September 2008

Sefton Open September - November 2008

Although nothing has been set in stone for any future gallery shows, I have a piece of work ('The Land of the Dead' pictured on the left) which has been accepted for the annual 'Sefton Open' at the Atkinson Gallery in Southport. Whenever I have seen previous shows the work displayed has always been of an excellent standard and Im sure this year will be no different!! Details on how to get there and opening times can be found at the web address below. Hope you can make it.
http://www.seftonarts.co.uk/home.php?d=aag&PHPSESSID=149ffd74268f752f3ff1b192cf1eea53

Artists Statement

My current
practice is centred mainly around painted and drawn formats, alongside
photography, digital composition and occasionally collected imagery from magazines,
websites etc…
The most
recent project I have been working on has focussed primarily on mark-making,
line and gesture. However these pieces have an intentional ambiguous narrative
that hints at (and makes reference to) a number of differing sources and
interests that I find ever fascinating.
From a
young age I have been excited by tales of exploration and old maps, this in
turn has become an adult obsession with sea charts, aerial photography,weather
forecasts and many aspects of geophysical phenomena (in particular theories
relating to the formation of supercontinents) and has grown from a juvenile
love of the ‘fantastic’ nature of such subjects, into a study of the abstract
qualities of cartography ( ideas relating to scale and distortion) and it’s
potential.
Making
reference to literary work by Borges, Baudrillard, Verne and Eco, amongst
others,my artwork is a development of these interests, with the outcome being a
number of hyper-real paintings and drawings, simulated again and again using a number
of different mediums to produce works with a duality that questions both the
idea of the ‘Real’ and the ‘Abstract’.
Starting
with a series of old macro photographs (taken from a long since destroyed
series of gestural abstract expressionist paintings) these images have been
digitally manipulated and worked upon to create compositions with a far more
infinite potential, each work being a direct response to the last. What are
left behind are images that no longer have any origin in the ‘real’ world but
instead exist only through the emergence of their own mythology, a journey
through an undiscovered seemingly dystopian landscapes.