Duncan McAfee
Courtesy of Turps
FINAL DAY EXTRA 10% DISCOUNTS!!!
Born 1976, Hertford, UK, current Turps Off Site Painter, living and working in Camberwell, SE London.
Recent highlights include a double solo exhibition at 303 Projects and The Art Gallery, Lowestoft, Suffolk; Solo exhibition and live events with Brixton Art Club, London; Oh God, solo project with Kyle Marks Projects, Canada.
For 'It's A Pattern' I've created the 'Going Spare' series of paintings made on cross-laminated upcycled cardboard. In using this ubiquitous everyday material I'm considering the sustainability of my art practice while also depicting a certain anxiousness common to our current condition. There are negative shapes and voids in the panels which are made from offcuts from previous constructions. Painted cartoon motifs from previous work have been dissected and reassembled to make random patterns, full of energy and a sense of reorganisation or falling apart, echoing the psychic mayhem of our contemporary cartoon world.
I often describe my approach to painting and drawing as like playing a game of consequences with myself. I playfully employ misremembered bits of art history and contemporary imagery, combining pure flat colour, graphic and figurative elements with messy paintwork. The emerging characters look like street-drunks, beaten up cartoon characters spattered in Claret. They wrestle with themselves, contorted and dis-jointed, uncomfortably torn between figuration and abstraction, but strangely celebratory; mascots of our confused cartoon world or Riddley Walker-esque prophets for what may come next.
Ultimately I love contradictions. I make loose, sideways references to art history, philosophy, religious iconography and paint or draw these with irreverence; grand themes handled with a light touch.
