Video/Symposium: 'Destroyed by Shadows', John Bunker, Donal Moloney, Michael Stubbs discuss Contemporary Abstract Painting and the Screen, Liverpool Hope University, 2018

John Bunker, Donal Moloney, Michael Stubbs discuss Contemporary Abstract Painting and the Screen. Although this videoed symposium is based on the group exhibition, it goes onto discuss the wider context of painting today. From understanding the gestural mark as a sign, to the relationship between hand making and the disembodied screen, the questions posed by Donoal Moloney interrogate paintings validity in the face of ubiquitous digital expansion. We also interogatte the academic use of the current term 'Expanded Painting' as a conceit that re-emphasises Greenberg's privileging of the hegemonic linearity of painting over all other art forms. Starting with Robert Rauschenberg's famous quote that: "After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing in these paintings that could not be changed, that they can be seen in any light and are not destroyed by the action of shadows." , The artists in this show invert this claim to ask questions of the received wisdom's of the idioms of abstract painting and theories about the destroyed narratives of modernism and post-modernism. By inviting the shadows cast by the social histories of art, politics, non-art materials, digital representations and the bodies performative actions into the realm of abstraction, this show questions the notion that an artwork can simply be a blank receptor for the ever changing vagaries of the day to day or a viewer’s own subjectivity. It also challenges the idea that painting's meanings reside purely in the artist's assertion of control and intentions. They explore anxieties about contemporary culture and the shadows of history (and futures) that constantly move over the contemporary picture plane