In this series of paintings, framing devices — wreaths, garlands and variegated assemblages of classical, baroque and rococo models — lead the viewer into deep vistas of allusive paint. Turbid workings, marks and gestures combine with films, skins and veils of sumptuous colour to make a seductive and dynamic surface, into which the figurative elements are integrated. Glazes, pools and accretions play across the picture plane, making reference to the mist, spray and vapour of landscape and atmosphere, suggestive of a space beyond.

The symbolic significance of the imagery is of gateways and openings. The compositions imply a threshold where the focussing power of the motif conjures the appearance of new, transmuted perspectives. There is a ‘through-the-lookingglass’ feel to this sequence of paintings, something otherworldly, that draws out various, tangential associations from science-fiction, mythology and the elemental imaginings of Turner’s ‘sublime’ landscapes.

The pictures are contemporary articulations of antique models. Such florid and abundant imagery expresses an aesthetic of sensuous complexity. This corresponds to today’s ‘meta-culture’ of worked-up appetites, fusions, cross-overs and mash-ups. In a world where saturation and plenitude is all and hyper-stimulation the norm, Tim Wright’s paintings propose a dream space of cascading variety, where limitless mutability and change is always an exciting possibility.