Sunshine + Growl's Garden

Being bombarded today by new albums from Chris Clark, Exile and Venetian Snares that Tom's been downloading (bloody pirate!). I'm crouched on the studio floor trying to make my friggin printer work properly(!) grr. Found this old image. A couple of drawings mashed up in Photoshop...

Work in progress...

This piece has been on the build for a while and has gone through a few stages. It started as a single canvas (Below). I was working with having a roughly central symmetry and divided the areas up into triangular sections...


I then added a second canvas (made from an old painting that wasn't going anywhere and seemed to share some qualities with the new one), put them side by side and started working on them as a whole. I haven't actually decide which way up the finished piece will be yet.


Below, close up detail...


I'm not sure how this will look in the end, but stay tuned for updates. :)

Chrx & Max!

A piece I did a while back with Collective-Era collaborator (and good ole friend) Max.... We never got as far as giving it a title though...

Bovine Interception!

The continuing trawl through the (wud be) classics... These are all from around about 2005...


'Bovine Interception'


'Product'


'Conflict Machine'


'(Output) Input'

Fuselage Test Sheet

A piece from a while back. Messing around with a scanned drawing, printing it over a printer test sheet and then re-scanning it.

An early inspiration...

The prints of the Japanese master Utagawa Kuniyoshi have had a massive influence on me ever since I first saw some hanging on my grandparent's wall when I was a child... I posted some examples here:

http://futurewinnersofbadminton.blogspot.com/2009/03/utagawa-kuniyoshi.html

Exhibition...

A few of my things in the Collective-Era 'Chaos in the Continuum' Show at the Jam Factory (Feb - March 2009). Mostly quite old work but newly framed...


From left to right (As labeled in the gallery). End Level Tentacles, Anarchy Dot, Pixel Rahtz Dos, Accid Mote, Gawoomph!


These two are the latest additions to the series.

Full pictures of the show can be found here: Photos of Collective-Era Art Exhibition at the Jam Factory.

More of my paintings...

'Eight Minutes of Nano-Technology' (Below) This is quite an old piece, created with acrylic, emulsion, spraypaint and marker pens. The title comes from the idea of the acceleration of technological development put forward in Daniel Pinchbeck's book, 2012. "The Stone Age lasted many thousands of years, the Bronze Age lasted a few thousand years, the Industrial Age took three hundred years, the Chemical Age or Plastic Age began a little more than a century ago, the Information Age began thirty years ago, the Biotechnology Age geared up in the last decade. By this calculus, it is conceivable that the Nanotechnology Age could last all of eight minutes. At that point, human intelligence might have complete control of the planetary environment, on a cellular and molecular level. This could lead to utopian creativity or dystopian insanity - perhaps both would arrive at the same moment."



'End Level Tentacles' (Below), Emulsion, acrylic, markers and collage. One of my favorite small pieces... Computer print backgrounds created with Photoshop are collaged together and integrated with painted and drawn imagery.



'Noosphere One & Two' (Below), Acrylic and markers. ..Noosphere... Again a bit of text from Daniel Pinchbeck. "...transitioning from the original organic balance of the biosphere, progressing through increasingly artificial, destructive, and destabilizing layers of mechanized civilization that [Argüelles] dubbed the 'technosphere," and finally, after the imminent collapse of our technological support systems , attaining the 'pristine conditions' of the noosphere - a state in which humanity, as telepathic collective, would be directly attuned to the crystalline precision of the Gaian Mind."



You can see all of these pictures and more here: Art work by Chris Menes on Collective-Era

A new canvas...

A new canvas I've been working on the last couple of days.. More lovely abstract structures! probably guna work with collage again on this one...

Sketches etc...

Old sketchbook page from sometime last year. Just messing around with lines...




A section of an old drawing doubled up on Photoshop... nice n raw.


Don't ask! Occasionally theres an angerish moment! ;)


Conflict Machine... abstract study

Doom Math Cloud Machine...

My largest finished painting to date. This was finished at the start of 2008 in time for the Collective-Era Customs House show... Doom math cloud machine? The demise of Newtonian logic, the free falling collapse of our technological support systems and the abandoment there of...



Close up details... The surface is made up of collaged computer prints, emulsion, acrylic, spraypaint and marker pens.



Another close up... I definitely had lots of imagery from anime films floating around my head when I made this. Maybe something of the cityscapes of Akira. Also I had just discovered Tekkonkinkreet and Dead Leaves!

Tattooed baby

My tattooed baby line drawing... I'd like to turn this into a screenprint one day, run off millions of them and pretend to be a rich successful Banksy wannabe. I based this image on a section I painted on a Collective-Era collaborative piece.

Work in progress

A close up photo of a recent painting. This is a work in progress. It looks quite different now but thought I'd post the older version first...

Screenprint design...

Just a mess about with Photoshop and a photo of a something I painted...