“Lighten the Load”.

Gareth Brighton, Thomas Hancock & Micaela Irvine

Flotsam: debris which have fallen overboard into the water or washed up on shore, often as a result of shipwreck or accident. When looking for a reason to paint, one normally begins with the task of what to paint: wading through the tides of pictorial information that washes up on the shore each day and over saturates one’s retinas.

These painters in questions are disparate in imagery and form, yet are akin in artistic ethos. Re-articulating visual (or literal) detritus; op-shop bric-a-brac refashioned; sci-fi kitsch and home movies re-envisioned to acidic intensity. All of the visual jetsam, which the vessel of our contemporary age has shaken off its back: crystallised in pigment.