Darren Porter

My practice explores the notions of relationships between our psychological and material surrounds. This involves the taut and tame balancing act required to understand place and belonging in an increasingly detached social network. The paintings deal with the idea that the more we are encroached upon by events, stuff and technology, the more we become the pocket-sized person confronted by unlimited intervals. In the picture frame something has occurred that not even I am aware of, the figures are for the most part helpless but not totally distressed. Connected by ropes, wires and tubes with the machine as family, we freefall into the future.

It's a global concern, and the geographical locations in the titles suggest this. They are places I’ve had contact with. Through travel, where friends reside, or a story or photo I’ve come across that has forced a response. The figures I use come from various sources, my own photographs, newspapers and magazines. I also use the Internet because it has a random quality about it, depending on what you type into the search engine to get a result. By displacing the figures into a different context, the paintings have an abnormal transience, a kind of unsteady reality.

I paint for the mystery of it, locating something where there was nothing, the mathematics of it is not that complicated, I think you can chase it down. You just have to focus. You just have to go after it.