Alexandra Darbyshire Flood

Statement

 

My current work is comprised of two ongoing series Daughter Particle and thesplit, which present as a 2-part chapter completing one another's essence. This work is as an ongoing conversation around the unknown, decidedly spirited, with titles often suggesting the complex world we live in. In 2019, my practice tipped into the free-fall of abstraction in paint, producing compositions which lightly touch on physics and bio science, nudging at our own physical world. As an image maker, I cannot help but be aware and be affected by how the world has seemingly headed into unfamiliar territory over the last few years. Film maker Adam Curtis's Hypernormalization (2016) has held strong in my head since, regarding the dizziness of this time and how we got here. I was willingly raised on a steady diet of American television and MTV before heading to art college, so as an accumulative result my influences are often random threads between pop consumerism, film, and the pages of art history. I'll never escape the residue of human activity when I paint, and it's apparent. My brushstrokes are generous and playful, with a freedom that creates expansive movements between the deeply personal and the mundane, offering space for inhabitants like otherworldly presences, figures, emotions, lurking alone or with others, in an atmosphere of their choosing. In turn my work holds an awareness of civilizations colliding with the natural world, and the effect this state delivers to the human subconscious.