Lynden Mallinson casts a sardonic eye over the conflicted political machinations of our time. An image maker, a sloganeer and spectator. Mallinson creates bold statements and graphic images which point an accusing finger at the viewer, inciting us to wake up, question everything, believe nothing.
Accomplished in an art of manipulation and digital art, his work moves through cycles of remaking, deconstructing and re-assemblage using painting, drawing, collage and digital media. This provides a metaphor in itself for his preoccupation with control, technocracy and power and its perennial re-presentation through the bending of truth and fact. His recent figurative work invites us to converse with a cast of characters operating through a language of motifs and symbols that act out for us in different configurations on his canvass as stage. Their cartoon like quality offers up a slapstick view of the world that questions depth, integrity and the disposable culture of society and individuals. He mediates his subject through gentle irony and a hint of mockery. His current use of mask as trope questions our position on silence, enforced or chosen and our responsibility within this.
An angry art and a playful art, what is Mallinson offering the viewer other than to poke fun and to proposition us to open our eyes and speak? He trades in ugly subjects, dealing in dystopian viewpoints, subjects which have long occupied concerns in his work where he interrogated some of the usual subjects, the economies of war, corruption and hypocrisy. His interests are well served by his history as a scenic artist, which underpin an eloquent use of materials in his painting. In a background that plays homage to baroque, rococo, trompe l’oeil, we can see the very genres that speak of surface, illusion and facade.
One can detect moments of tenderness in the work, a thinly disguised beauty and sensitivity that reaches from beyond an artifice perhaps crafted from 30 years of working in the media where glamour, illusion, celebrity and ego play king.
One can surmise that, within the work lies the tenderness of a mark more subtle than those traces left as fingers around a throat, that seek instead to engage on a deeper level of connection and humanity.
Kirsty Klaxton - Curator
Photos represent a selection of several bodies of work undertaken between 2012 and 2022. New work entitled “Speechless” to be exhibited in 2022. An exhibition of digital art that explores the recent global pandemic, authoritarianism, cencorship and free speech.
“You can’t cherry pick free speech. That’s not fair is it? Free speech is a right everyone should have. As Voltaire once said - “I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it. “ - I believe that censoring free speech is an attack on self expression and ultimately creativity.” - Lynden Mallinson
Photos taken by the artist March 2022. All works protected by copyright.