Archive / Repetitions

One

One was the first significant body of work in the Repetitions series and marked an important turning point in my practice. The paintings were made in 1997 and later acquired by One Aldwych Hotel in London, where they became part of the building's permanent collection. The series began with ideas of individuality, repetition and identity, but also opened the way towards many of the concerns that would shape my later work: image reproduction, transformation, memory, collective experience and the relationship between people and place.

The title One refers both to a beginning and to the individual. At the time I was becoming increasingly interested in the contradiction between the way advertising promises uniqueness and the reality that it endlessly reproduces the same ideals. Turning the pages of a magazine, image after image claimed to offer individuality, yet they were all selling the same aspirations. Repetition was already embedded within contemporary culture; this series was the point at which that observation became central to my work.

Bathers presents a crowd of sunbathers arranged across the surface of the painting. Each figure appears individual, yet the repeated forms create a larger pattern of shared behaviour. The work reflects on leisure, aspiration and the ways images of the body circulate through popular culture. Seen in the context of One Aldwych, where the painting was installed beside the hotel swimming pool, it also developed a quiet relationship with the daily rituals of the building itself.

One painting, Bathers, developed an unexpected history of its own. Installed beside the hotel's swimming pool, it spent years absorbing the warm chlorinated atmosphere of the space. Quite unintentionally, the painting acquired an olfactory dimension, becoming not only a record of its own making but also of the place in which it had lived.

At the same time, the paintings became more formally structured. The expressive landscapes of my earlier work gradually gave way to compositions governed by clearer internal rules. A small but significant shift occurred during the making of Making Hay, where I painted the sun as an expressive gesture, an orange disc hovering over the landscape. Here the logic of nature was imposed, and the sun now occupied a defined position within the composition, above or behind the horizon. It was a subtle decision, but one that signalled a move away from expressionism towards a more ordered visual language.

Garden reflects on the ordered space of the domestic garden: a place where nature is shaped, owned and arranged according to human desire. The painting sits between the private and the collective. A garden may appear personal, but its forms, fences, lawns and borders often repeat shared ideas of comfort, taste and belonging.

Deluge places repeated houses within a flooded landscape. The regularity of the buildings suggests order, planning and settlement, yet that order is immediately unsettled by water. Like many works that followed, the painting reflects on the fragile relationship between human structures and the natural forces upon which they depend.

Migrate continues this interest in repeated movement. The work suggests passage, flow and collective direction. It belongs to a wider concern within the series with the way individuals become part of larger patterns, whether through travel, habit, aspiration or necessity.

Estate looks at the repeated forms of suburban and urban planning. Houses promise privacy and individuality, yet they are also produced as units within a larger system. The painting reflects on the tension between the personal idea of home and the collective structures through which modern life is organised.

Beamers transforms motorway traffic into a repeated visual rhythm. Cars become signs of mobility, status and desire, but also of congestion and collective behaviour. The painting is less about individual vehicles than about the systems of movement we create around ourselves, and the patterns into which we willingly enter.

Block considers architecture as both shelter and repetition. The tower block offers a powerful image of collective living, where individual lives are contained within identical structures. It reflects the broader concern of the series: how singular experience exists within systems that standardise, repeat and organise.

Orbit extends the idea of individuality and repetition beyond the earth. The astronaut appears as an isolated figure, yet also as part of a collective technological ambition. The work reflects on human aspiration, exploration and the strange loneliness that can exist even within shared endeavour.

Looking back, One feels like the point at which the concerns that have shaped the rest of my practice first became visible. The paintings remain rooted in everyday experience, but they begin to ask larger questions about repetition, memory, identity and the images through which we understand ourselves.

The whole series was acquired by One Aldwych in London in 1999, where it remains on permanent display. Gordon Campbell Gray, one of the hotel's founders, became an early supporter of my work and later commissioned further paintings for the collection. I am proud to be part of the One Aldwych family.