b. 1990, Merseyside
Master of Fine Art with Distinction, Chelsea College of Art and Design, 2013
Jon's work is an exploration of process based figuration within painting, focusing on how loosely figuration can be defined. The work seeks to question where the boundary lies between the abstract & the figurative and how that can shift through process and perception. Jon's work embraces and emphasises the acts of destruction & reconstruction and explores the tension between temporality and permanence.
There is an exploration of the domestic and often overlooked, focusing on subtle everyday elements and occurrences that often go unnoticed, whilst also highlighting the importance of a painting's self-referential history and how each layer, decision, and revision contributes to its context. There is a tension within the work whereby the hierarchy is challenged, destruction is viewed as important as construction & the confidence to execute these processes are key.
Jon's work is rooted in drawing, loose snippets of figuration appear, recur, unfold and disappear. Oftentimes figuration is loaded & appears collage like in application. Fragments of storytelling; everyday objects, organic shapes, sports references & 18th century pottery all unfold to create a non cohesive narrative that can be interpreted by the viewer in many different formats & contexts.
Alongside these loose figurative components that hold & guide the paintings, the work plays on disruption through acts concealing, erasing & aggregating; washes and pools of colour overlap & break figuration. Jon's painting is framed as a process of self-discovery, one that involves retraining the hand to work alongside, and sometimes against impulse.
Wool Hunter of Gotland
The artist on the work behind Edition 01.
'Wool Hunter of Gotland' is an exploration of process based figuration within painting, focusing on how loosely figuration can be defined. The work seeks to question where the boundary lies between the abstract and the figurative and how that can shift through process and perception & how this is translated in to an assembly framework.
Alongside these loose figurative components that hold and guide the painting, the work plays on disruption through acts concealing, erasing and aggregating; washes and pools of colour overlap & break figuration.
The hope when putting the artwork together is for the viewer to find the small nuances of colours, close tones that appear with the closeness & tactility of touch and handling of the artwork, something that is not normally possible. The idea is to play on a collage based arrangement, where flat areas are aggregated and almost fold in to much more expansive fields of colour in which the figuration emerges.
Feeding off the title, which is unusually descriptive in this artwork. It features the gun dog which is a nod art historically, but also a reference to the jigsaws of old. Classic historical images, as informative decorative memento. I like the idea of the 'dog' holding the frame but also disappearing back and forth in to the background. As a recurring motif in art history & my work generally the dog is a symbol of working or labour, something in which both the assembly & the painting requires.
Jon Pilkington
