Living in a magazine Collage

Andy Pullan is an artist who explores personal identity issues, using empirical knowledge as an impetus to explore interdisciplinary practice. From the Extension of a Tag graffiti series to the process of collection in labour-intensive factories exemplified by Work Ethic, Pullan’s paintings evolve out of a process of layering, removing and reworking materials to find an inevitable form. These empirically sourced studies explore how an individual’s identity can be enveloped within the structural apparatus of society, be it by consent or control. Taken as a body of work, these pieces show how certain jobs leave little room for individual expression or autonomy, emerging in unexpected forms. The relentless march of work and the passing of time, the feelings and emotions monotonous work engenders and the bits and pieces left behind combine to form a portrait of a restricted life; the life of an automaton, a relic from the industrial age, alive and (somewhat) well in the north of England. A graduate of the Contemporary Arts BA at Nottingham Trent University, Pullan also works with the mediums of video, installation, sculpture and photography