The gap between subject and expected content is an area I seek to exploit. Stories are suggested but lead nowhere; the oblique narrative is implicit rather than explicit. I strive to be strategically vague in my work.

The physicality of the work is very important in that it defines the possibilities and limitations of our appreciation of the sublime. Embracing the notion of certain failure caused by these limitations; my work explores ideas around the exhaustion of symbols, tropes of absence, invisibility and concealment.

Lucidity and a coherent narrative suggest progress and purpose but are merely oversimplifications. In our liminal state the signifier is often loosened or cut adrift from it's referent, leaving a vague sense of understanding or realisation being just around the corner.

With understanding being just out of reach or focus, it is as if I were painting things that are moving on the periphery of my vision, but when I turn my head to get a clearer view - the target moves. This paradoxical vista, this embrace of the spectacle of the anti-spectacle, describes the parameters within which I make my work.

Karl England 2010 _________________________________________________________________________

'Invisibility and concealment feature heavily in England's repertoire. Whether a disproportion of content to space, fragments of narrative or allusions to the past life of an object; meaning is both suggested and evaded at every turn.

Untitled is one of a series of 'lost' images: photographic negatives that have been under-exposed to such an extent that nothing is visible on the original film: it is completely obscure.

The image is rescued in the darkroom by exposure to a long, heavily filtered light. In this instance, light itself is the agent of change - not simply in the development of the image, but in drawing out something that was not seemingly there before. However, in a Lacanian twist, it is only when what was on the periphery of vision is centred and bought into focus that we understand it is impossible to attain what we desired. In being realised, the image has become something else and failure is perpetually ensured.'

Sophie Wilson for Chiaroscuro 2009
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