James Quin

These paintings address what might be considered a reasonably straightforward question: what, if anything, can be achieved in painting from what is often perceived to be a most unpromising strategy for the visual artist – that of repetition? The emergence of repetitive strategies in my own painting practice generated a body of ongoing work that questions the temporal conditions of painting. 

I define painting’s temporal conditions as the ways in which painting depicts and represents time, the phenomenological encounter with painting as it unfolds in time, and painting’s ability to temporalise the space of its encounter. 

This body of work, begun in 2014, and now comprising sixty five paintings, has been constructed to be encountered within a labyrinthine installation space that tests the temporal conditions of painting, a space that allows us the latitude to explore an expanded notion of time-based painting. We may, therefore, consider not only time-based painting, but painting-based time. I have defined painting-based time as an apperception of time, a heightened awareness of past, present and future, made visible through repetitive strategies.


Quin studied painting and printmaking at Sheffield Hallam University (Psalter Lane), was awarded an MFA and PhD from Newcastle University, and is currently painting lecturer at LICA ( Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts).

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