Jack Woolley

Jack, an artist based in London and Edinburgh, has developed a relationship with painting that investigates the overlapping notions of object, illusion, and surface – questioning the roles of the elements that make up a painting and experimenting with deconstruction and repair. What if the stretcher bars become the dominant form, hovering above a suspended canvas? What if the canvas is cut up according to its own intrinsic topography, then sewn together to reveal its latent three dimensionality? Behind this questioning movement between dimensions is a political impetus, an investigation into injustice, and fundamentally an interrogation of the gap between representation and reality. Jack’s practice of expanded painting embodies these ideas through analogous imagery and process, but also through the visibility of inverted conventions. He considers his material language with intention: along with the properties of oil and acrylic paints, he will variously weave in organic matter like bonemeal or orange peel, sailmaking techniques he learnt from his father, or architectural aggregates as a real-world texture.

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Jack is also a chartered architect. Click on these links to see examples of his architectural work:

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Old Workshop​

Spiral House

 

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