The Big Foldy Painting of Death

The Big Foldy Painting of Death is an expansive artwork created on a large scroll of canvas that spanned the circumference of the gallery space. A project initiated in 2011, Ian Forbes’ painting is a narrative of apocalyptic doom and ecstatic rebirth. Characters appear throughout the painting occasionally musing, via comic speech bubbles and scrawled text, on the process and practice of contemporary visual art or purposely shifting ideas and concepts into absurdity. This pragmatic approach wrestles with critical art practices through the inclusion of high and low art forms: a variety of techniques are employed to depict futuristic structures and psychedelic creatures emerging from planes of colours, abstraction and texture. Ian Forbes endeavours to make objects that reveal the magic space created by the imagination and push the limits of his abilities. His most recent work is a conversation between the tradition of painting and contemporary artistic practice: a bizarre confluence of technique, critique and personal expression generated by ongoing investigations of narrative image creation.