Two painters whose work combines to present aspects of ‘identity’ and ‘place’. Alison Hand is interested in the representation of landscape; perceptions of uselessness and utility; regeneration, utopianism, and the picturesque. Neil Morley combines elements of travel, tourism, colonialism, post- colonialism, British history, portraiture and the politics of representation to provoke political discourses predominately concerned with British national identity.

Alison Hand makes paintings about the everchanging city and Neil Morley builds paintings that look at parallels between 19th century colonialism and 21st century tourism. Both artists studied at the Royal College of Art and have shown their work widely in the UK and further afield. Other projects include ‘If you look like your passport photo you’re too sick to travel’

Alison Hand writes - ‘Landscape is where we inscribe power, ownership, and decide what is worth looking at. I like these new, peripheral kinds of landscape that are thrown up through regeneration, reclamation, and .improvement'. Strange peninsulas of new building sites, eco parks, rubbish dumps, service cities, holiday homes, olympic sites and expos, cleared land waiting for something. I am interested in how a landscape is perceived as useful or useless, and how we negotiate it. When does a walk become a trespass’.

Neil Morley writes – The painting techniques I employ are concerned with the exploration of the visible and the invisible through masking and revealing images and by isolating elements of heavily patterned fabric to create a push and pull between the background/foreground. A major component of the paintings is the use of cheap, mass-produced fabrics which often have inherited cultural or social associations as the main support. The use of fabric importantly creates ready made possibilities and dictates the visual development of each individual painting.