What inspired the theme and recurring depiction of judges in the artworks you created for this gallery exhibition? What led to the portrayal of toxic masculinity in this context? And why do they seem to be adorned with grapes rather than confined within the paintings themselves? I can interpret the judges within a Georgian context, where toxic masculinity becomes intertwined with the winemaking tradition, and those who view their traditionalism as superior to other historical narratives. These male figures may exude an air of snobbery and superiority, believing they have attained a heightened level of 'enlightenment.?

I think one reason for wanting to have these figures of ‘judges’ is that previous works have focused on these symbols of power largely through objects, objects that directly or obliquely suggest male power and patriarchy. Symbols such as fountains, peacocks, footballs were employed but in works that largely didn’t use the figure directly. I did previously use a male figure who I called Ambivalent Man - he looked like a boyish classical figure with a very hairy chest and was an archetype of sorts. However, having kind of ‘killed off’ Ambivalent Man, I felt there was a space for the human figure to come back into the work, but there was a question of who to paint. And this, to me, is a kind of perennially difficult question! The judges are in one sense an answer to the question of who I feel able to paint. There is an ongoing internal debate around who I feel comfortable painting from my own subject position as a white, male, CIS-gendered painter. As my work with painting has developed over the last decade, I feel as though this question has changed a great deal and is very much alive at the moment. To some extent, I ask myself if I should be painting at all, then who do I feel can be the subject of my works. White men painting other white men come with certain risks as well – the risk of perpetuating the importance of privilege of these subjects. But my aim is to acknowledge this risk and acknowledge this question or ‘problem’ and by doing so, allow myself the space to represent these kinds of figures. In a way, I am quite literally painting myself into a corner, giving myself such radical limitations. And I noticed that the images of the judge figures are all de-centred, as if they are literally being marginalized. I think this was an unconscious act to begin with but became an important relation between the compositional and conceptual dynamics of the work.  

I think I have always been interested in the conventions or genres within the history of painting – still life, portrait, landscape etc - because they give you a starting point, take away some of the pain of trying to answer this question. But of course, they then present another set of problems and questions in themselves. 

Another reason I have been looking at the figure of the judge is the area I live in London. I live in Westminster, and this is where our national parliament is, and also where the other arms of government are – many buildings within the area that consist of the civil service like the Home Office, the Foreign Office etc. So not only the real seat of power, ie, parliament, but the machines of power, what makes government happen, are in these modern and not so modern buildings around where I currently live. So, inevitably, I have started thinking about those aspects of power structures that are behind the scenes, indirect, even hidden, with everyday workers who are part of making government function. I then started thinking about the judiciary as another aspect of these hidden structures of government. This brought me to the connection between aesthetic judgement and taste and other kinds of judgement – legal and moral – and how the idea of taste, in English at least, connects us to aesthetic judgement as well as physical taste. So the grapes are also a symbol of taste – both aesthetic, as in the classical tradition, and physical taste. I felt there were more connections between these elements of the painting – the grapes and the portraits – than initially meets the eye. The grapes, which take on human characteristics through their distortions, and have a kind of agency through their movement, and the human portraits of judges, who are in fact very still and immobile – lifeless even! There are obvious formal contrasts, but also indirect conceptual connections as you have so brilliantly described through the viticulture in Georgia and its associations with a particular kind of masculinity. 

I like the idea that you could read the judges as being adorned with these grapes as you describe. I also think you could read the dynamic in a different way, as if they are surrounded by these encroaching, monstrous grape-forms. I think there is ambiguity in which element has more prominence, or more power within the image. A portrait always draws your attention as a focal point, but the grapes have more dynamism, more energy and dominate the picture plane, despite functioning like a frame. Then of course the landscapes, which function like an additional frame, also encroach in an unruly way. The most conventional, the most conservative element are the judges who preside seemingly unaffected by what is going on around them. But as I mentioned, they don’t occupy the centre of the picture. They are always to the side, on the periphery, like playing cards pushed to the edge of the table. Or a post-card pinned casually to a notice board, they are there to be looked at, but are willfully de-centred.