ArtConnect asked the winning artists to share with us a glimpse into their creative life to get a sense of their personal inspiration and artistic process.

How would you describe your artistic approach, and what themes or ideas drive your work?

My work starts with satellite imagery of areas of global sociopolitical conflict, which is then abstracted and obstructed with either vertical pulses of painted marks or metal cages that create a physical barrier between image and viewer. I am drawn to the idea of the exhausted image or poor image, as Hito Steyerl would call it.

These images have been abstracted by their journey through the internet and have lost both resolution and context to a point where it is unclear where they came from and what they are, or rather what they once were. What they are are visual remnants of our digitalized word, evidence of the new way of looking at ever-circling imagery through screens. This idea of hundreds of the same image existing in different resolutions, different states of decay, many attached to articles, and many misinterpreted, accidentally or purposely, is central to my practice.

My most recent work all stems from one image and the location where it was likely taken. A whole series of work stemming from a singular image, the same buildings visible or obstructed in multiple works, the same formations of marks in the pulses across multiple paintings, each being an abstraction of the same source image.

You mention your work navigating the tension between individual artistic freedom and political engagement? How do these elements come together in your practice?

It is a push and pull, which I am constantly adjusting. Usually, when I have finished a work that is quite heavily abstracted and taken far from its source, I feel the responsibility to create a work that is more directly legible; these are usually the works that I then cage in for being too revealing, too vulnerable to the viewer's gaze. Ultimately, the question my work aims to evoke is: What part of the work still is political? And where does it stop? Depending on your perspective on what socio-political art is your answer might vary drastically.

What emotions or messages do you hope to convey through your work, and why are they important to you?

I do not aim to incorporate any message in my work. I don't think that I am in a position to communicate an opinion through the work. I can ask questions through it and investigate those questions, but the viewer each has to decide for themselves what the outcome is based on their own preexisting perspective.

Can you share a piece or series that holds particular significance for you? What drew you to that subject matter?

I try not to have favorites, but usually, the most recent work is the one I hold dearest. I have never really been able to work in a proper series but I think the latest work could possibly be seen as one. The subject matter or concept is the same as it was before; I try to change that as little as possible and get different results through the approach I take as well as by improving my artistic skill. One aspect that I keep striving for in these works is the merging of image transfer and painting, which I think is the most successful in The Flea and The Acrobat / Lamentation A-EF57-13 and Lamentation A-EG6-22. I also recently began using serial titles that refer to the specific section of the satellite image that was used.

What kind of responses or emotions do you hope to evoke in viewers? In general, but also particularly with this work?

The debate about the emotional effect of my work is unrewarding since the work is very calculated, planned, and systematic. So, I don't believe that there is reason for an emotional response. What I want the viewer to consider is the question of the sociopolitical nature of the work; I would like each viewer to ask which of the works they see as having a sociopolitical context and which ones they see as divorced from it and to try and pinpoint where one melts into the other. Those questions can then also be applied to the sociopolitical digital image in various stages poorness, of decay, and the answers compared.

Can you describe your creative process and the themes or concepts that drive your work?

My creative process follows a rigid system I have set up before. The setting up of that system was creative; creating artworks within that system, however, is a task that places little value on creativity and purposefully so. The concept of my work centers around the sociopolitical image's endless digital circulation and existence in various states and contexts. So, I wanted to create a practice that similarly lets one image and the information embedded in it, such as location, fan out into a whole series of works - in different stages of legibility.

The system always starts with me overlaying the satellite image with itself multiple times until I reach a level of abstraction I am happy with. I then choose different sections of the image and transfer them onto canvas (cotton /viscose) with acetone. Then I either build a metal cage around it or obscure the image with painted vertical pulses, both would have been preplanned already.

I try to use the same sections of the image as many times as I can and also to use the same pulsating marks as often as I can to really push the repetition until I feel the image is entirely exhausted. I tend to then discard the weaker half of the work. I reassess what went right and wrong with each piece and decide on what part of the practice to develop further, and the system repeats.

How do you stay engaged and inspired in your art practice?

I listen to a lot of artist /curatorial talks on YouTube, which helps me critically engage with my practice. Then, it's really the looking back that motivates me. I see the previous work and how much better it could have been, having learned more. Nothing pushes me more than a failed work or a work I originally considered successful but then discarded. In addition, I try my best to see a good number of well-curated shows, which are harder to find in London than you'd assume, but when I do, they really drive me to question what my practice can be. For some reason, lately, the pairing of works has often been more interesting to me than the individual work.

What are some challenges you’ve encountered in balancing your artistic practice with the realities of being a professional artist?

Obviously, living in London being an artist is tough; studios are expensive, flats even more so, public transport costs a fortune, and art, especially these days, does not pay well, if at all; both galleries and artists are struggling. I am fortunate enough to have a well-paid day job that I set myself up for knowing what would come, but few people have that, and even above minimum wage, it is not easy without a trust fund. It can be frustrating if you have a lot of good work forming in the studio but do not have the luxury of time needed to produce it.

How do you see the role of contemporary art in today’s world, and where do you see your own work fitting into that conversation?

The way I see it, a growing part of the art world is engaging with the digital image in multiple ways; I am thinking of artists like Jack Warne and the recent work of Julie Mehretu, where she works on top of blurred photographs. It is not just individual works or artists however; The Cheat by Toby Ziegler at Max Hetzler 2017 or Double Take by LVH Art in the summer of 2024 are perfect examples of what contemporary shows are and should be. Double Take showed multiple works that were somewhere between print and painting, the hand of the artist melting with that of the machine.

Contemporary art has to be engaged with the time it inhabits and with what that time distinguishes from what came before, so I think it is crucial that we see the impact of the digital image in non-digital art. When you have Mehretu merging printed images and painted marks to a degree where even after half an hour of looking and analyzing, you cannot make out where one ends and the other begins is when you know she has done something groundbreaking and inherently contemporary. I hope to arrive there someday.

Anything else you would like to add—perhaps something about your process, influences, or what’s next for you?

Maybe just one thing about the non-numerical titles I use that doesn't usually come up; I try, as in every other aspect of my work, not to have too much of a personal influence and rather reuse and reference than create anew. Many of the titles are chains of references where, similarly to the work, it is unclear how far down to the original reference it carries. The very end of the chain often comes back to religion. For example, Lamentate (Marsyas) refers to Lamentate, a work by Arvo Pärt that responds to Marsyas by Anish Kapoor, which responds to the skinning of Marsyas in Greek mythology, which itself has many paintings stemming from it.

Another example would be I Saw a Dream, which refers to the Daniel Variations by Steve Reich, which themselves respond to the killing of Daniel Pearl as well as Daniel 4:5 in the bible, or Adam's Lament, which can be both seen as a reference to Adam's grief when being driven out of the garden of Eden and to Arvo Pärt's composition of the same name.

This multiplicity of references runs parallel to the exhausted image existing in multiple different states, distancing itself from its original form and context, approaching abstraction the same way my work does.

See more of Ben’s work

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