An Alternative Means of Escape

About

Ongoing themes within Savage’s work are identity, perception and the nature of reality, looking at how these three states are constantly moving, evolving and influencing each other. He is drawn to experiences and pluralities of thought which do not have clear resolutions and instead develops work around the premise of the absence of a fixed truth and the fabrication of reality we all have constructed as biased observers. 

Each piece treads a line between, and attempts to come to terms with, the mixing of personal experience and collective shared consciousness. Formally his work has been influenced by ideas from physics, especially quantum superposition; capturing a moment in an amalgam of mixtures, leading to densely layered imagery for the viewer to find themselves immersed in. 

Rather than a reduction down of ideas to a supposed essence, Savage’s interest lies in an explosion outward of possibilities, finding that within this ungraspable plane that some form of personal internal development can arise much like Wittgenstein's ladder. The paintings role is to become a catalyst and feedback loop system for the viewers own subjective discourse carefully balancing communication against exposition.

Ossicles I, part of a small series and named after the three small bones in the middle ear. Serving as the boundary point where sounds in the air become internalised within the liquid of the human body, the piece takes as its starting point the very basics of communication itself. This multilayered and fragmented painting explores the gaps in language and the snippets of information we piece together, to not necessarily find a sense, but instead construct one.

In his Ubique Series, Savage was captivated by the transmission of ideas through time and across the ages. Ubique meaning “locate”, looks into ideas themselves as chains of information built up over time, not born in isolation, but as a sequence and compounding of ideas to create their present form. 

The visual form of this idea is evinced in the archaeological nature of the surface of the work

Each layer involves both the creation of new and evolution of previous states, leading to a visual frisson across the image surface

As well as original paintings, also on show will be a small selection of the artists limited edition prints of other works from the same period, providing further insight into Savage’s working process at a more intimate scale.