VALERIE GLADWIN MONTGOMERY, London 2008. My artistic practice is underpinned by my curiosity about whether symbolic devices lose or retain value as cultural iconography when stripped of their original context. My paintings use intensely saturated, often dissonant colour combinations to re-interpret stereotypes and cultural references. In my current work I am exploring incongruity. The compositions are selected deliberately for their disjunctive relationship and assembled in a kind of painted collage: abstraction is mixed with figuration, ambiguous text is combined with nature references, and cultural cues are incorporated into signage. Although no obvious correlation between the images may exist, by their proximity within the canvas, a relationship based on both visual and conceptual concord or discord may be implied. It is my intention to achieve energetic compositions which suggest multivalent readings.