Bad Jelly: Painting and Writing Images

‘Bad Jelly: Painting and Writing Images’ unfurls via images that act as entry-points for excursive discussion. Each chapter traverses a key image, which has recurred in different forms, or persisted in some way throughout my life. This methodology is informed by a range of image theorists, art historians, and artists (including Georges Didi-Huberman, T.J. Clark, Noah Davis and Lois Dodd); principally, it engages Walter Benjamin’s concept of 'denkbilder' (thought-images)—written images that allow one to explore philosophical ideas. Like an exhibition of paintings or a book of short stories, the image-chapters that comprise the exegesis are a rearrangeable configuration. They are ‘fluid’ elements, which build-upon, conceal, and reveal one another. This approach to writing—of thinking-through-images—echoes the role that images play in my practice, as the material, methodology, and content of painting.