January, 2014, Aerosol on Birch Ply, 90cm x 60cm, Painting
In Decadence, memory is treated as a surface that can be repeated, preserved, damaged and changed. At the centre of the series is a wallpaper pattern taken from LUAP’s childhood home, where it covered the living room for almost twenty-five years. Reconstructed digitally into a repeatable image, something once embedded within everyday life becomes a recurring structure within the work.
LUAP subjects this ordered pattern to processes he describes as artificial decay. Corrosion is initiated through materials, catalysts and environmental conditions, but its final behaviour can never be completely controlled. The repeated geometry of the wallpaper meets the unpredictability of staining, chemical reaction and deterioration, creating a tension between intention and entropy.
Decay does not simply erase the original image. It interrupts it, exposes it and produces new surfaces through its breakdown. Pattern remains visible in fragments, sometimes asserting itself and elsewhere disappearing almost completely beneath the effects of time and material change.
Decadence does not attempt to preserve the past intact. Instead, a familiar image from childhood is repeatedly reconstructed and allowed to transform, reflecting the way memory itself persists without remaining fixed. What survives is not an untouched record, but something altered by time, repetition and everything that has happened since.
I was really delighted with my 2013 Decadence print series as it allowed me to experiment rapidly with colour. I have decided to revisit this project and create a series of 30 new art works for 2016, but this time I want to make the application of the wallpaper pattern unique. So no printing!
LUAP is featured by Design Week for Helmets for Heroines, creating the one-off motorcycle helmet Ethereal Blossom for an auction raising funds for Breast Cancer Care.
LUAP creates Ethereal Blossom, a one-off motorcycle helmet developed from the materials and processes of Decadence, for the Helmets for Heroines auction in support of Breast Cancer Care.
LUAP creates an edition of 25 individually hand-worked Prints for Decadence, combining Screen Print, Acrylic, ink and Aerosol on Somerset White Satin Paper.
LUAP’s Causality is featured by Homes & Gardens in its September 2013 issue, highlighting the rusted steel work from his Decadence series as part of a wider interest in metal within contemporary garden design.
LUAP presents work from Decadence at Mint in Knightsbridge, returning a wallpaper pattern reconstructed from his childhood living room to a domestic setting after exhibitions in London and Hong Kong.
LUAP’s Decadence series is featured by Creative Times during Descending the Staircase, focusing on the collaboration and industrial processes used to translate his recurring wallpaper pattern into metal.
LUAP’s Causality is featured by fine art framers John Jones after the studio developed its first purpose-built outdoor frame for the large-scale steel Sculpture from the Decadence series.