Thomas Greig, Atom Spit

About

Thomas’ work is an impulsive, but selective series of decisions made about objects and materials. 

Through sight, touch and memory, these decisions are driven by a reactive and intense response to the things around him and are often chosen or drawn, through personal or emotional resonance. 

Reaching across the private and domestic sphere, Thomas’ work is everything to do with his life, however intimate. It speaks about his upbringing, his history and memories and his sometimes extremely specific association with certain objects. His work is simply about living and the excess of living. 

There is an intense sensitivity and responsibility Thomas feels towards the inanimate; towards the ‘life’ of things. This is why he is often drawn to used objects, old things, which are on the knife edge of redundancy, at the end of their usable shelf life, awaiting landfill. They are debased and so have a changed value. Charged with their previous life, but no longer useful. Rather than giving up on or discarding these objects, Thomas’s work is radically positive. Instead of disavowing something as abundant faceless junk, he highlights the role that this ‘stuff’ has in shaping and defining large parts of our lives. 

Thomas’s genuine excitement at the ‘life’ of things, puts the onus and responsibility back on us; to think about objects in terms of love and compassion for our environment and ourselves. It galvanises an empathetic, personal way of looking. 

His drawings give these objects or memories another place to exist; extending how we perceive and value their existence through abstraction. They are purposefully non technical, purposefully quick and purposefully many. 

Sensitive and reactive decision making is the release of Thomas’ impulsive energy and the production of a highly charged, interwoven body of work. Atom Spit is the dispersion of this loaded content. 

- Co-authored by Rebecca Guez and Billy Crosby, January 2019.