This show is chiefly about the two things that I value the most in artmaking:

 

texture and storytelling.

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I’m obsessed with texture. Because of that ink and illustration has been a love at first sight for me. Compared to a medium like watercolour, oil, ink drawing feels painfully slow, it feels like one is constantly pushing against some resistance. But precisely because of that, my pace becomes deliberative, working in ink forces me to think through every minute detail: every wall, every window, every object, every curve and every plane that I consciously choose to place in the composition, and where to put it in relation to everything else.

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Ink conveys texture on paper like no other medium. Precisely because there are no colours involved, a surface is defined solely by its value and how that value is distributed. And an interplay of values makes texture of immediate emphasis in ink artwork.

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My work is about creating worlds.

 

Some are larger, more vast and complex, some are smaller and simpler. But these environments are meant to be snapshots in a story, and I urge you to think of what that story might be.

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Thats the first question:

How did we get here?

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I think as I draw, and I draw as I think. As I reach a new section of every artwork I’m thinking: what are the stories that have transpired that make this environment, or this building, or this space appear the way that it does? Consequently, how do I communicate those stories via objects and via their textures. If something appears smooth, reflective, engineered then there is a underlying reason why it is that way – emblematic of the time that it exists in and milieu of the people who created it so.

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More pertinent than that, is the second question:

 

What now?

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What's left in the space that separates our world, from the world within the frame? This exhibition exists in that space. The space containing all the decisions we make, the actions we take, that can guide us toward, or away from some future.​

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This isn't social commentary, or a story about saving the world. The night before the exhibition opened, I stood at the confectionary lane at the neighbourhood 24-hour Fairprice for an hour contemplating if getting milk or dark chocolate was a better choice for the exhibition. In the end, I bought a mixed box.

 

I freeze, I blank out, and sometimes I don't know. Sometimes we don't know.

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The artworks in this exhibition are snapshots: of some certain time, some certain state of affairs. What comes after that? How are we supposed to respond? Sometimes we don't have the answers, and just thinking – hitting a wall – is enough. We sit, we wait, and we ask:

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What now?

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