The Black Series

The Black Series an exhibition and conversation between two artists consumed by ‘blackness’ as a space, material and cultural construct. Both artists chart carefully through a dark terrain, constantly moving and searching …

Amanda Francis’ practice is preoccupied with the identity, specifically how context (external conditions and circumstances) affect identity formation. Currently she is interested in probing the stability of ‘Blackness’ as a cultural construction. Acknowledging subjectivity as an individual who inhabits it, each drawing emerges intuitively and organically on paper. Here ‘blackness’ is presented as a nebulous entity, constantly in a state of flux.

There is almost a scientific scrutiny - a pseudo clinical approach, which informs the production and installation of the work. Accordingly several different ways are provided to look at an individual piece. Some drawings require the viewer to move around the image to consider its characteristics. Others are illuminated in order to look through the surface, excavating its structure. What at first appears dark and impenetrable is subsequently revealed as complex and multifaceted. Consequently attempts to isolate and pin down the ‘black entity’ are constantly thwarted. 



Paul Jones’ work stems from questions of memory and imagination. All his work has this strong thread connecting them. Though the viewer may find a myriad of materials and media being used, his goal is to push concepts through the work, balancing the believable, observable world with the unbelievable, the unseen, the unhelmlich. 

He depicts ‘Space’ in detailed ink drawings on used envelopes. The drawings are executed in pencil, half automatic doodles which are then deciphered with ink pen to produce the finished work. 
His works continues to grow intuitively. Using state of the art digital resources, Jones has navigated his gaze within the dark dystopia of strange skull landscapes venting volcanoes, and dark space anomalies. These new works show a continued exploration into Jones’ dystopic spacescapes emanating from ‘somewhere else’. Features of this dystopic ‘space’ encroach and appear as anomalies within our own space and time, like a walking dream.