Sam Hull

Manchester Metropolitan University BA(Hons) Fine Art

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Artist Statement

My work is concerned with our experience of the urban environment: the sense of dislocation from our natural environment and the polarities we exist between, such as order and chaos, freedom and constraint, growth and decay.

The goldfish paintings in particular refer to the polarities of freedom and constraint, and feelings of alienation. The fish is used metaphorically to represent existence, or the energy of being. I am particularly interested in urban information systems and their social and philosophical context. These paintings use the visual language of these systems, primarily road and street signs, alongside other elements of the pervasive visual culture we live in.

My work aims to suggest absence and also the resonance of a previous presence. This is something that I find around me: structures which are redundant or being regenerated with a different use or meaning, people who have gone but leave their influence, or ideas which are no longer appropriate, but their resonance remains. Again I want to represent this energy of ‘being’: or the position between opposites – being and nothingness, order and chaos. These paintings are developed using layers of thin acrylic paint. Sometimes layers are obscured or obliterated during the painting process. This process gives the painting the opportunity to develop organically, sometimes in reference to itself rather than my demands, though control is regained by graphic lines and edges, and broad, flat areas of paint. I want the painting to have layers and elements which make up the pictorial surface but which are not clearly perceptible in the finished work, in same way that wavelengths of light or pixels are essential but not necessarily visible.

Sam Hull

Manchester Metropolitan University BA(Hons) Fine Art