Chaos in Paradise | Judith Burrows

The paintings in this exhibition are inspired by the locations sourced for my photographic and film work. In preparation, I explore a specific area to find relevant backdrops for musician’s portraits and album covers. I take photographs as reference using a variety of cameras, both digital and analog, exposing new and old film stock.

Settings range from urban to rural and coastal landscapes, as well as extraordinary architectural interiors. These scenes contain an alternative narrative to the one I will later allow the musicians to impose on. My interest is in how we individually relate to our surroundings, and the narratives we weave into them. Many of these locations are ephemeral, disappearing within days, in the ever-changing skyline. I am intrigued by the captured moment and the impermanence. Graffiti is painted over, hoardings come and go. They exist only in photographs, and paintings.

Once processed, the resulting photographs develop their own dialectic. Some images spark memories and provide the inspiration for further exploration. Random passers-by, captured by chance in the location reference shots, are a significant part of the new narrative and are included in the painting. The characters in these improvised scenarios appear anonymous, genderless strangers who resonate with my search for a place in the world, and a sense of ‘self’. They become entangled in the yarn and are repeated, often myriad times, suggesting all possible permutations and outcomes – the “what ifs” of paths that may or may not be trodden.

The new narrative develops like a storyboard. Overlaying negatives, painting further detail, collaging in text, music score, lyrics, contour lines from a map with layers of abstract textures and symbols. Some details may be temporary – a piece of graffiti, a painted hoarding, or an eroded coastline. It is these chance presences, however, that combine to create the contingencies of the work, shared on paper or canvas, offering a multitude of dramatic narratives within a single image, inviting the viewer to contemplate and revisit their own memories and dreams.

I stretch the works after painting them. They often continue beyond the frame, turning round the corners of the wood, disappearing beyond the line of vision…. a perpetuation. The works are not framed, because the story continues even after the narrator ceases to narrate.

Titles are from words and phrases that occupy my mind while painting, occasionally taken from song lyrics, literature, found text, or from the locations themselves, such as On Great Eastern Street, where I photographed Billy Bragg, Titles encapsulate the new narrative that comes from the repetition and layering of possibility…. And again … memories with no words … again and again’ resulted from immersion in relevant childhood memories that arose from children running