Hollis Brown Thornton‘s paintings and drawings take me straight home to my past, to a time of VHS cassettes, infernal floppy disks, that were the bane of my life, and arcade games. They seek to rebuild, re-create, reconstruct the past in an attempt to rekindle the relationship between the past and the present.

In a way Thornton’s mission is doomed to failure. The past is merely a collection of fragments, of moments and memories. It is only reality that belongs in the present moment, the past and the future merely constructs of our imagination. That is not to say Thornton’s work is a waste of time rather it is a noble mission. Memory and our relationship to the past is a fundamental part of what it is to be human, to be alive, to feel and Thornton attempts – through his paintings, pigment transfers and marker drawings – to find that space, place in which he can connect the two.

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Jared Buschang is principally a photographer but I came across his paintings the other day and was, as I often am, struck by the expressionist quality of them.

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Dino Valls paintings are psychological portraits that defy contemporary art in that reference the past masters of the Renaissance rather than the great artists of the 20th Century. His work centres on the human psyche, the darkness within, by using figurative techniques to project a conceptual picture full of symbolic content.

My painting serves to bring darkness, anxiety, torment. What I do as an artist is to delve into the darkest and most unknown of man.

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Mike Brodie aka ‘The Polaroid Kidd’ is an accidental documentary photographer in that he didn’t set out to be one. In 2004 he was given a polaroid camera and over the following four years spent his time criss-crossing America in box cars shooting his friends, homes and lifestyles. What he ended up with was ‘Ridin’ Dirty Face’ a photo series documenting a transient sub – culture of hobos, train jumpers and squatters, pictures that illustrate themes of homelessness, travel and companionship.

What’s most remarkable is that after he showed the work, won awards and adulation for his pictures Brodie quit. He found something else to do, to see, to search for. He also has one of the most interesting statements I’ve read to date:

Maybe I’ve just become obsessed with dirty cloth & dull rags, objects that have been touched by a million different hands then set back down—right there—just for me. Things that are made by chance or found on the side of a road, rather than bought or sold. What’s a story anyways? Why do people tell them?

My first memory was when I was a year old. Imagine that. Lyin’ by a river bed, Arizona is hot in the summer, and even worse when you have an earache. One-year-old with no pants on, screaming and crying like it would help or something, my face bright RED. The blanket I was lying on, made of prickly pear green wool. If that cloth was still around, it would tell you a story. But its long gone, underground somewhere, tired.

I’ve been shittin’ and pissin’ for 20 years since that day. Most of the time I miss, but I “make photos” now, valued by some. Who are these people? One of my favorites is still that one my mom took, my dad cuttin’ into a turkey like a man—in prison since, my grandma laughin’ drunk in the foreground—dead now. I still have that one. As for why, who knows? This is where I am and what I’m doing. Everyone I’ve ever met is responsible for it, and those eyes of theirs—never blank—always tryin’ to focus right there on the pupil. It’s always difficult to get a good look at both of ‘em. Go ahead and try. You’ll just end up starin’ right at the bridge of the nose.

The photos. I want people to see ‘em just as you’d want to tell someone a good story. Nobody enjoys boredom. And when I’m good and dead, maybe my lungs’ll still be around, with some words beneath. Everything comes as a surprise—thank GOD.

Some may say the pictures are romanticised, that they are too beautiful – reminiscent of Horace Bristol’s Grapes of Wrath era pictures that captured migrant workers on their way to California – that they are a lie, hide the truth but what we must never forget is that what these portraits do show. That we are all different. That not all of us are happy with the way things are. That things must change before we domesticate ourselves to a mediocre death.

Ken Kitano’s photography has always focused on time and existence and in his series ‘Portrait of Our Face’ he took this idea to its logical conclusion. The idea was beautifully simple. He took portraits of different people from the same social group such as young girls, office workers, farm village women in Bangladesh, monks, soldiers and so on and turned them into a representative image or meta portrait.

To achieve this pictorial image each persons negative was quickly exposed onto the same paper, layered on top of each other, with the eyes carefully aligned. The more faces that were exposed – and up to 40 negatives were used for the final image – the more the contours of an individual became blurred, the expressions and ages more ambiguous. The final picture became what Kitano calls ‘Our Face’.

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You could ask what makes Olivia Steele‘s neon art so different from the plethora of other neon artists? It’s a good question. I spent a while trying to answer it myself before posting up her work. My conclusion? Well I love neon, words and site specific work. And about Steele’s work? I think her use of clichés – those terrible phrases that are practically devoid of meaning – in specific locations are alot of fun and quite frankly made me smile. Her work is sweet and I know some people may see that as a condemnation but I don’t. Sweet nothings, even if they are clichés, written in neon are cool. I love them. If they were written for me I’d be head over heels.

Another aspect of her work that I really love – and you’ll only notice if you look closely – is that she installs her work into areas of high visibility and social mass. They’re populist, not gallery driven and I get that, I love that, I appreciate that.

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