Portal IV: Fully Awake Exhibition, House for an Art Lover, Glasgow

Portal IV is a painting (51cm x 64cm) exhibited as part of the Fully Awake Series of exhibitions. Curated by Ian Hartshorne and Sean Kaye the show invited several artists to submit a piece of work, as well as invite two ‘guest’ artists to be presented alongside them; an artist that they have been taught by, and an artist that they have taught. This unorthodox approach creates engaging and surprising relationships between those participating. Fully Awake is a five part cycle of exhibitions that eschews thematic, aesthetic or theoretical concerns but aims to reveal instead much deeper levels of incidental human, personal, psychological connections and occasional rejections between student and teacher.

Portal IV was made at a time when I scanned small collages I was making (8cm x 10cm) together with pages from my sketchbook. These scans were then digitally merged and intentionally brought out of focus through photoshop where the image is on the verge of becoming something else visually. The manipulated image was then printed at a large scale and mounted onto a dibond surface. I then proceed to work on top of the surface using oil paint which adds another material layer to the image. The sharpness of the paint edge together with the softness of the image activates and creates space. In my work I am interested in creating spaces that are both real and imagined. The large rectangular painted shape acts as a portal, an entry into another space or another world. Here the work hints at a threshold space, a space on the edge of becoming.

Featured artists: Jo Addison, Maggie Ayliffe, Garry Barker, Steve Carrick, Jai Chuhan, Majella Clancy, Susan Connolly, Samantha Cordery, Sean Cummins, Richard Creed, Nelson Diplexcito, Pip Dickens, Julie Ellis, John Golding, Oona Grimes, Simon Harris, Tony Hill, Clyde Hopkins, Lauri Hopkins Frank Kent, Stuart Mackenzie, Joe McGillivray, Christopher McHugh, Dougal McKenzie, Jose Rafael Cordeiro Mendes, Donal Moloney, Gill Ord, Tom Palin, Phoebe Ridgway, Dave Ryan, Dani Smith, Lucy Smalley, Tony Smith, Estelle Thompson and Louise Wallace.