Scott O'Rourke

I collect and horde a variety of visual information that allows me opportunities of re-animating them in regards to multiple readings and surface. A wide spectrum of forms, gestures, motifs and images are translated into paint via an aesthetic and labour intensive accumulation of paint on temporary surfaces independent of the support. Over time, image becomes mass and ultimately sculptural which then is peeled or scraped off and saved for a future role. A whole new range of possibilities for these skins, lumps and fragments of paint is now evident forcing me to react and engage with them. Unexpected narratives emerge as different edges and skins of paint are juxtaposed by formally treating them as collage and decollage.
What interests me is how this treatment of the image through layers of paint and ooze interrupts passive acceptance of them. The aesthetic after this layering process resembles detritus or monuments to satisfied desires within our consumer culture now celebratory reborn. These fragments when assembled engineer a kind of alchemy; subverting and bringing new context to the standard signifying identity of the base parts depending upon how much slippage occurs through matter in their cultural, economic and sexual mea...

Royal College of Art, London, GB, Painting,