David Thomas, Amid our Narratives, 2006
Enamel on photograph on Dibond, 100 x 150 cm
November 3 — December 20, 2007
David Thomas lives and works in Melbourne where he currently lectures as an Associate professor in painting at RMIT. In his practice which includes painting, photopainting and installations, Thomas engages with the monochrome in an at once speculative and reflexive, reverential yet unorthodox way. He employs monochrome in conjunction with other elements – painting and photography – situating them ‘in the world’, as intervals in the fabric of everyday life. Thomas refers to his works as ‘composites’ enabling things, which are different, to be reconciled over the time of viewing as they reveal shifts in perception and reading. By situating the monochrome in relationship to other codes, the artist allows apparently contradictory impulses to coexist: material and metaphysical, pictorial and spatial issues are brought into a relational context, capable of being read and understood over time.
Thomas’ reflection paintings are a screen or surface on which to stage the play of light, the drama of space, and the experience of looking. His recent series of ‘photopaintings’ encourage temporal readings and convey a sense of ambiguous space, of figuration and abstraction, and of complex space/time relationships embedded with a single image: ordinary photographs of public sites are obscured in part by geometric fields of monochrome paint, which evenly rest like a reflective skin on the surface of the work and interrupt the illusion of deep space forcing the viewer to glimpse around corners, to augment the image from memory. Thomas’ works sit between categories and provoke consideration of the idea of spectatorship and photography.
