Jonathan Spencer

I studied fine art painting in the 1980s and then went on to do a master’s degree in computer animation, since then I have been constantly involved in the television industry (mainly in the design of virtual and augmented reality) and have used my time outside work to explore my interest in time-driven art works. I look to apply elements of chance to my work. The serendipitous fracturing and distressing of images has been with me for a long time, I was buying random vinyl records, sanding them down, photographing and recording them and then inking them up to print at college and that spirit lives on. Mostly these days I write software tools to apply synchronicity and use samplers rather than audio tape and a razor blade. However, that systematic approach to deconstructing audio forms with white noise, effects pedals and re-sequencing led me back to drawing as a primary form of self-expression, but I still need barriers to obstruct the process of looking and mark making. In part I have achieved this writing software tools, but the hunt of primary source material led me back to drawing. The creation of the two halves of an image ‘on-plein-air’, the depth matte in black and white and the colour pass, gives me that excitement of never ...

1979-82 Newcastle Polytechnic BA Fine Art
1984-85 Coventry Polytechnic MA Electronic Graphics

2011 Triathlon Pt2 V03: Streaming Festival, UK
2012 ARCHER Athens Video Art, Greece
2014 RiverTrain, Toride, Japan
2016 One Minute series, One Minute Walk UK (now in the BFI)
2017 CountryWalk, On Demand, Baltimore, USA

2018 Memory, group show Remind Me to Remember, Reading UK

2019 SUDDENLY: Mushrooms digital publication In-between Albert Oehlen Cardiff, Wales
2020 Drift_Two_V09 Outside the Form (Bath Festival) UK