A punk attitude incorporating subversion and unconventionality has become a significant part of my studio practice as a result of the way I've been trying to explore contemporary art and contextualise myself within it.

How can fine art be explored in a contemporary context? My current body of work, and in particular my "dripping distortion form" paintings, are the result of my examination of this question. I made explorations in a number of different directions as diverse research seemed the only way to explore fine art in a contemporary culture that moves seamlessly from art to television, to music, to film.

This line of inquiry began when I started making musical metaphor paintings about the band The Jesus and Mary Chain. They wrote pretty three chord Beach Boys like pop songs and then layered them with feedback, white noise and distortion. The paintings I made had colourful hard edged cubist-like retro backgrounds that I first covered with resin and then with loose curved black and white "distortion forms" which stood as the musical metaphor for the white noise and feedback.

I then decided that I should try and "undo" these paintings and work out what was happening in them in the language of painting as opposed to music. I had noticed that when I put the distortion forms on a painting it gave the work a sort of extra virtual layer. Consequently I began looking at grids and the picture plane which led me on to make works that tried to explore what painting is. From here my practice expanded in a number of different directions.

I began making works which incorporated commercially available posters of paintings by well known artists, which fitted in with my interest of making art about art. I also made works with projecting painted nail and screws; simpler works, hopefully more elegant and poetic, which were just of the distortion forms themselves; works with an optical basis and more processed based phenomenological works about the physicality of paint. I also looked at photographs of my work as the finished piece and paintings of found images, in this case record covers.

This research led me back to making paintings that were similar to the musical metaphor paintings I had made at the beginning of my research but this time in a looser fashion and with more emphasis on colour. In an effort to ensure the paintings had a clear distinction to modernist woks which seem to rely on balance I would randomly pour varnish or resin across the front of my paintings and place the distortion forms where the varnish dried thereby allowing an element of chance and chaos into the works.

Most recently I have been excited by the work of David Burrows and Jim Lambie which seems quite unconventional and subversive within the art world which, it could be argued, can be quite straight jacketed at times. The punk attitude of their work matches the ethos behind the musical metaphor paintings that I have been making and that are located at the core of my practice.

CURRICULUM VITAE

Name Date of Birth

Robert John Dunt 7 February 1971

Education and Qualifications

2001-04 City & Guilds of London Art School First Class, Fine Art Painting BA (Hons)

1995-96 Inns of Court School of Law, Bar Vocational Course Called to the Bar 1997

1990-93 University of Bristol, BA (Hons) English Literature 2:1

Awards

2006 Celeste Art prize
2003 Kidd Rapinet painting prize