the Agency

J D : I have been thinking a lot about oceans recently. I do not know why? It seems in this time of uncertainty I think about the ocean because the sea appears small. So, I am looking at the sea but dreaming about the ocean.

Shapeshifting of places or living beings has been at the heart of Jack Duplock’s ongoing practice, which began with an engagement with peripheral subcultures and folk customs in small communities. Bubbling under the veneer of small town life in the northern hemisphere remnants of old folk practices and shamanisms merged with biker and indie culture. In making these beliefs and dreams visible in abject figuration injected with geometric shapes and voids from an imagined high Duplock gradually developed his own more and more abstracted folkscapes.

In his most recent works some faint traces of human figuration remain in the imaginary rock and water formations of a rugged coastline with acid coloured skies and strange floating geometries.

Duplock’s ocean dream seems chemically enhanced and presents as if interrupted by minimal insertions, in the shape of a rectangular colour block, a beam of light reflecting in the water or a portal to new shores....