George Quiney

How do I imagine - and come to terms with - the life my partner led before he met me?

Are the stories we tell ourselves closer to reality than we care to hope? Or are they so fictional they are laughable? What do our assumptions, our fears and our hopes reveal to us? Why do certain scenes torment us? Does everyone ask these questions?

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Across my practice I follow a compulsion to draw the scenes that rotate in my mind, a process which acts as a starting point for most bodies of work. I treat the images that I transfer from within me as a map of my feelings: a signal of how to proceed both artistically and personally. I make printed work, often alluding to how we capture memories and tell stories, be it in photographic film or animation. I use memory to consider the function of relationships, in particular how we might come to terms with our own subjective experience and the unknowability of those who are close to us.

In my most recent body of work - You Before Me - I ask myself the questions above. I bring to life my concerns with sequential images that, although they come from my own subjectivity, could reasonably represent a more generalised set of issues. I process the images with digital engraving, wood, and fibrous paper, using the grain and weave of the materials to meld history, memory and fiction. The resulting tableaux cross time and perspectives, and invite the viewer to step into this creative and, at times, unsettling space.