Eileen Quinlan and Cheyney Thompson are building a reputation as two of the most interesting young artists working in America today. For this exhibition, their first major show in the UK, the New York based artists collaborate on a series of new works which take Arnolfini’s summer film programme as their starting point.
In the past Cheyney Thompson has produced exhibitions that revisit and interrogate the conventions of painting and conceptual art. On one level his practice is an investigation into the possibilities of painting and a deconstruction of its processes, applications and conventions, but his work can also be seen to address the economic and social value of the work of art, and art practice in general.
Eileen Quinlan is best known for making photographs which explore photography itself. Through a restrained, precise practice based on analogue studio techniques, she produces highly abstract surfaces through the simple manipulation of colour and light. Employing photographic methods and ideas of the historic avant-garde, such as those used by the Surrealists and the Constructivists, as well as design and graphic elements from advertising and stock photography, she plays with the conventions of reproduction and display.