As a painter working between China and the UK, I combine cross-cultural traditions of this multi-layered artform to deal with concepts and issues of international impact.  I revisit images of personal and collective significance, attempting to reconstruct or grant them new interpretations and meanings. In this way, I gain knowledge and insights of contemporary life and culture which heavily affect us.

 

I am interested in the notion of ‘post-truth’ and how today’s media shapes opinions of the ‘real’ by appealing to subjective emotions as opposed to communicating objective facts.  Manipulating information and imagery through painting, I raise questions around the authenticity and dissemination of ‘truth’.   

 

I see myself as an image-hunter, collector and archivist, reworking materials gathered from the press, TV broadcasts, film, and personal photographs.  Those that are seen again and again, stand not just as isolated episodes but as social products, symptomatic of its contexts and values. 

 

We speak of knowing the ‘whole truth’ yet the documentation we witness, imparts only carefully controlled fragmentary moments.  By selecting, evaluating and re-presenting visuals of personal resonance, I try to articulate more comprehensive first-hand experiences out of these events.  This analytical process involves applying

compositional filmic devices such as cropping, close-up, focus, framing, and sequencing as viewpoints from the lens of screen are combined with conventional painting mediums.  These echo the temporal shifts of the biased narratives that reach us and the uncertainty of our long or short-term vision.  Zooming in or panning from a distance, the results conjure up individual memories and experiences: a methodology that accentuates our separation from the real and perhaps motivates us to find differing ways of engagement with our world.