Michael Ashcroft presents a new series of large-scale oil paintings. Jungle Paintings is based on images of the jungle chosen from various books and catalogues of the 1970s.

Enlarging these onto canvas, Ashcroft sometimes edits out figures or objects, to create spaces without people, leaving only the viewer. The jungle has been presented and allegorised as a dark, impregnable place, outside and alien to civilisation. These cultural images have helped create our own particular construction of the jungle. Ashcroft takes his chosen images out of their topographical sources to present them as paintings that allow for more subjective reflections.

Previous series have produced works painted from small and poor quality reproductions of landscapes by mid-19th to mid-20th century artists. These have included Sydney Nolan, John F Kensett as well as other painters of the American sublime. More recent works were taken from a 1970s atlas promoting the natural
glories of the USSR. Ashcroft chooses to represent places he has never actually seen, subjects veiled by politics, nostalgia or preconception. He examines our construction and mediation of landscape, focusing on the invented fictions rather than the reality of the places themselves.