“With the title of this exhibition I both invite your participation or shrug off your disinterest; come see, or don’t, I really don’t care. ENTERORDONT includes a series of large abstract paintings developed from tiny drawings processed in a myriad ways by photography and photocopier before being drawn and painted deadpan on the prepared canvas. Over the last decade or so I’ve been experimenting with this take on abstraction; with the main creative decisions being made over a hot photocopier and in the drawings themselves. By the time the template is ready to be painstakingly copied to canvas the bulk of the decisions are final and my own studio rules don’t allow for change. This process evolved as a kind of ironic take on NY School abstraction. My paintings looked big, butch and robust but were just borrowing that sanguine language to signal something was awry in my world and the body was, in fact, in trouble. In this current work I have used collage a lot more in the templates than previously, creating a layered sense that suggests via particular treatment of the edge of the works, an arch. The arch offers an invitational entry portal while simultaneously, like the theatrical proscenium version, alludes to the offering of mysterious drama. I do count on the possibility of a physical or even emotional engagement with painting still being available for negotiation in a post-abstract world. The works on paper are painted to look like collage and their texts lie and tease and generally indulge themselves with humour, fabulous colour and appalling behaviour…” – Peter Maloney
