Centred on the theme of the resort as an idealised place to get away to, this exhibition looks at ideas of escapism. Resort will question the notion of holidays as both a suspended reality and an escapism from the everyday chores of life.
 
Nick Carrick: ‘When I paint I escape the everyday monotony of life and enter a suspended reality, my own resort. These works are a metaphor for escapism. They are subjective as well objective. They represent and reflect a society that wants to try and block out reality, but you can never escape yourself.’
 
Paul Greenleaf: The British painter JMW Turner often visited the seaside town of Margate and described the skies as ‘the loveliest in all Europe.’ This inspired Greenleaf to use Margate as a starting point for Optimism Revisited, a series of new compositions derived from old postcards and new photographs depicting idealised skies. In each example the sky has been manipulated to appear almost uncannily blue and flawless as a relief to grey reality. These perfect skies act as a hope for the future whilst simultaneously implying themes of nostalgia and memory. A selection of Optimism Revisited skies feature in Arty 31: White.
 
Sharon Kivland: 'For some years now I have been following, the holidays taken by Sigmund Freud. I call my holidays that are not quite holidays “Freud on Holiday”. To undertake my holiday work efficiently I have read many rail and ferry timetables of Europe. I have produced two modest booklets that recount railway-related scenes and incidents in the works of Freud, under the title Reisen. This is also the title of three series of photographs, three very short films, and a set of screen-prints derived from guidebooks, which advertise the attractions of Swiss hotels, including the provision of a darkroom in which the keen amateur photographer may develop holiday pictures of alpine peaks, mountain lakes, and the steamy emissions of trains.’

Plastique Fantastique Communique: YOUR EXTINCTION OUR FUTURE!
 
PHENOME (= hu-man) quickly-became-ghost: wasted, sunken-eye-and-cheek. Pallor? That-of-wax-ed-fruit. This PHENOME-ghost thinks it is something but can-no-see that it is NO-THING but a HALL-LOOO-SIN-NASHUN (or, precisely, echo-of-a-feedback-loop). And whaoooooooooooo! this old loop can run-and-run… but not for-ever. PHENOME can only spin like an invert-ted-top. An eye it is: spiked on the sharp end of a cone pointed skywards (upright-and-uptight until entropy cools-its-chops… which blows sooner than you think my friend). But NOW, finally, PHENOME-time really is a running out. Yes siree! FINALLY REALLY RUNNING OUT! PHENOME-time not enough to run the infinite space of the (what-is) CLOUD. Too much plug-in. Too much playing with the sticky-icky lube-tube/fuzzy-insertion-slot. Too much connect-connect-connect-connect. Yes siree, TOO many prosthetics broke the back of this poor-old-PHENOME-circuitry.
 
What next then? NATURAL HISTORY: CLOUD gives birth to new animals. Feedback loop mutates/generates/inverts (less reverb-and-delay, more time-stretch-tool). All filters are visible and all connections are marked for these CREE-TURES (a host of parasites and, FINALLY: NEUROPATHEME). And they shall bring WAR: a war on PHENOME-ghosts until all is dead-and-dusted, until all transparent apparitions are circled, arrowed, filled in, made opaque, redacted.
 
No winners. Who survives? FUX-OWLING for one. All born flushed-and-unplugged, swimming the continuum, like water-in-water. And NEUROPATHEME no doubt a.k.a. subject-without-experience, all made sticky and ready to receive, ree-kiwired and re-wired, a confirmed neurocentric, bound-and-gagged, spoken-for-and-babel-rush. First NEUROPATHEME redacts the letter ‘I’ (followed shortly afterwards by all the other vowels). 2ND-GN N-PTH is born, and is first to sing (in a new loop of its own making): YR XTNCTN R FTR!
 
Plastique Fantastique | Your Extinction Our Future! is supported by the Arts Council England