‘Child’s Play’ is a collection of works which embody my nostalgia regarding growing up in a ‘post-analog’ world and my continuing love for colour. In an environment that continually distances itself from past, analog ways of living, I’m interested in whether our familiarity of digital styles within everyday life, such as graphics and animation, has changed the way we consume and perceive contemporary abstract painting.
This body of work explores compositional elements and the power of colour and pattern under the term of ‘post-analog’. I thought back to the Microsoft paint drawings I created on my old family computer when I was young. I aim to capture the same playfulness and bewilderment of the new technology, but through engaging and challenging compositions. My 10-year-old self on the program relied on the random squiggles I could make with the computer mouse, the tools on the program which made regular shapes, and the obnoxiously bright colour palette it provided. I echo this in my current work but with a more informed mind. There is nothing flatter than a digital screen and the two-dimensional drawings I would create, and I try to materialize this through multiple layers of acrylic and spray paint.
The interplay of flat colour with both gestural and digital patterns aims to push and pull the space within the frame of the surface; manipulate the world we can imagine inside the confines of the image. Intuition and reaction play key roles in this way; I react to each choice I make in the moment. This spontaneity is key to reflect my changing ideas within digital imagery, and the sense of movement and narrative between the compositional elements, which I hope you as the audience can contribute your own imagination to.
Hannah Mellul, 2021
