Postcard series
105 × 150 mm

In 1966, British artist Malcolm Morley made a large painting based on a postcard depicting a group of people lounging on the deck of a boat. He titled his work On Deck. On Deck was included in the Hayward Gallery’s exhibition, The Painting of Modern Life. I purchased a postcard of On Deck from the Hayward bookshop and and painted a monochromatic rendition of the image. I scanned this in and produced a new postcard which I then sent to a friend to repeat the process. Repeat ad infinitum. The results will eventually be collected, and displayed in an appropriate format. If you would like to participate, please get in touch.

“When I said my super-realist paintings were a “Dada” gesture, I was referring to the idea that basically painting from a reproduction was painting from a still life, because the image itself has three dimensions (including the edges). [...] I don’t think of the [photographic] source of a painting as second-hand [information.] For me it is first-hand. I am relating to the print of the image. I am not relating to where the image came from. The relationship I have to it has to be on a one-to-one basis. It is the image I am looking at.” —Malcolm Morley