Joe Dean | Chicksands Wood, 2022

Screenprint

42 x 59.4 cm

Edition of 10

Joe Dean’s work explores fleeting and transitory moments, filtered through memory, and abstracted in the subconscious. Context often only becomes defined or significant later. He begins with found images, photos or film, recorded instinctively and without pre-planning, and these are developed through a range of processes including woodcut and screen printing.

Dean is interested in the meeting points of nature and the manmade, the textures and contrasts in our urban environments, much-repeated journeys, and landscapes that have a personal resonance. Hidden histories. Recent work has focused on childhood experiences of a local forest that concealed a Cold War US military antenna array known as The Elephant Cage.

He is keen to explore the resonance of our experiences after the event rather than remaining true to what is seen or recorded in the moment. Time is frozen or expanded to allow space for contemplation or fresh perspective. He’s fascinated by the disjoint between what we see and what is in our memory.

Whether it is through painting, printmaking, photography or film, imagery is densely layered and open to multiple readings and interpretations. Dean will often leave things out, fragment, alter and edit as an image takes shape. The result is an abstracted view of the original reality, a way of holding onto these fragments and making them concrete. They represent brief moments of contemplation, the gaps in between.