Morgan Stokes

Morgan Stokes' 'Support Painting' repositions canvas as subject rather than surface, elevating the traditionally subordinate support to central focus. Resembling a drop sheet or discarded textile, the work is a formal study in painting - intentionally stitched, stained, and spatial. In a screen-dominated age, it asserts its physicality: creased, imperfect, handled. Echoing the layered construction of traditional oil painting, it uses the  medium’s conventional components (cloth, pigment, support) to explore the objecthood of painting in the digital age. Here, the medium is not  passive; it is structure, form, and message.

Stokes’ practice delves into the mediums of painting and sculpture, deconstructing them to their fundamental elements. Beginning with the traditional building blocks of each; pigment, cloth, stretcher bars, stone, he embarks upon a process of reinterpretation, interrogating the supposed value of each part and its role within the widely understood formula of what makes an artwork. By creating formal studies into material, he examines what he calls the ‘virtual gaze’: the shifting mode of perception as our lives become increasingly mediated by screens. The painting is no longer merely an object; it is an image endlessly reproduced online and consequently, Stokes views painting as a metaphor for personhood. Coupled with his exploration of the objecthood of painting, he seeks to create works that are simultaneously and paradoxically literal and philosophical.