About

 

“Identity is always particular, as much about difference as about shared belonging… identity can help us comprehend the formation of the fateful pronoun ‘we’ and to reckon with the patterns of inclusion and exclusion that it cannot help but create. This may be one of the most troubling aspects of all: the fact that the formation of every ‘we’ must leave out or exclude a ‘they’, that identities depend on the marking of difference.” (Gilroy, P. 1997 ‘Diaspora and the Detours of Identity’ pp301-302)

Michael Palmer approaches painting as a formal exercise, with a re-occurring theme exploring the application of a void, an ungrounding or omitted reality, an uncertainty or dilemma is often present within his work. Introducing us to a world seen through his own photographic archive and media coverage depicting the socio-political and socio-economic history of the last few decades, it is this which motivates his dialogue with loss wrought through time and cultural disruption. It is social fracture and its fragility captured in a single moment, the dilemma and its tensions in a photographic frame, that identifies his paintings. Rejecting photorealism for an enigmatic approach to convey his own authority to the subject and by degree removed from the original source material but still present within it.

MA Fine Art – University for the Creative Arts, UK. 2019 – 2020
BA (Hons) Fine Art – University for the Creative Arts, UK. 2016 – 2019