Painting

Liza Duggan

Pushing, Floating, Falling

Liza Duggan’s recent work dwells on an excess of visual information and visceral physicality. She, like many young people spends time online, on social media. Here a stream of visual information is given to users by an algorithm aiming to optimise engagement by pleasing and provoking. With enough consuming of dopamine-triggering online content, a mind will lose its ability to retain information then drift. Duggan reflects on how much her life and the life of those her age are shaped by algorithms.

Jellyfish themselves are a staple of aesthetic online imagery. In researching such imagery, she found herself scrolling mindlessly as the pictures took on a new meaning away from the gelatinous blobs she had so often kicked on the beach. Her existence online felt like floating in overwhelming algorithmic currents. Online images are fleeting, with emphasis on rapid consumption, compared to art displayed, asking for contemplation. Duggan ruminates on the nature of painting as a medium of creating images, versus as a means of creating objects. Painting is often associated with the making of a picture, as opposed to the crafting of an object. Is the “painting” then the physical oil on canvas or the picture it represents?

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