Neil Weerdmeester
My work records an act of gesture and a chance encounter where imagination begins and the process of creativity takes over. It sits between the real and the unreal recalling past memories and desires it is consciously painterly drawing attention to the tradition of abstraction and reflection and offers a chance to engage outside of the brief encounter of the world wide web, twitter and sound bite. The works share a common archive of a Super 8 Polaroid past and A contemporary digital society their complex surfaces and ambiguity invite the viewer into further investigation drawing them ever closer to examine the very act of painting in a futile attempt to create order out of disorder. Beauty in an age of digital manipulation they unravel a new source of ideas, a chance encounter with each opening a new beginning, imagination without resolution, image without text, a reality which we can neither see nor describe but one which we know exists. My work examines the role of art in creating meaning and challenges the passive consumption aesthetics of consumerism drawing links between the history of painting and the role of politics and media in a society obsessed and without critique of the ecstasy of communication.
