- Asperatus

Asperatus (selections)
Winter – Skeleton Gallery, Australian Museum

“‘Asperatus’ roughly translates to ‘agitated’ or ‘roughened’ in Latin. In recent times it’s appeared as the name for a newly discovered cloud formation, the first in over half a century. Dark and heavy clouds that pulse down towards the Earth like ripples viewed from below the skin of water, but despite appearances they disperse without casting a storm. A fitting reflection of the turbulence of present times.

The dis-empowering confusion of increasingly lateral problems and the abstraction of our actions for their consequences. For instance, with our consumption habits and global warming; with modern warfare; with the development of the global financial crisis; and with our reliance on digital information space in the modern workplace. The overwhleming confusion and chaos when you’re in the eye of the tornado and unable to view yourself and your situation holistically to make any kind of good decision.

With this in mind, my process for this illustration series involved embracing chance, chaos, instinct, intuition, dreams and other subconscious states to create my symbols and construct visual compositions, rather than the usual deliberate and purposeful craft and conscious development that I’m accustomed to in my professional work.”

- from interview with FinderKeepers

Praise for Asperatus

“The images on display are urban in stylistic vocabulary and dreamy by virtue of their familiar unreality: everything is recognisable, but something is a little off, with a vague sense of threat coming through the impossible spaces and proportions of the scenes and their disengaged, childlike inhabitants. There’s an allusive, pre-conscious feel to the symbolism here that is very well served by being put in the Skeleton Gallery context of explicable monstrum and scary storms.”

- Concrete Playground

“The location is perfect for Matt’s return to a subconscious and primitive approach to image making, with his never-before-seen illustration series, “Asperatus”. The starkly desaturated illustrations in ink, charcoal, paint and gesso portray visual narratives with a reliance upon instinct, intuition, waking dreams and chance. Matt’s imagery is haunting. With an uneasy tension between individual characters and elements, his unnatural environments possess both a stillness and a sense of creeping change – as if each illustration is morphing while nobody’s looking.”

- Indie Art & Design

“Highlighting dark tones throughout the series with disturbing, surrealistic imagery to highlight relatable feelings and everyday life, the artist leaves much depth in each piece to be explored by the viewer”

- awe50me

Read more at Design Federation and Finder Keepers

Asperatus

Deliverer

Peel

Conquer

Constellation

Still

Steps

Danse

Convicts

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