JULIAN DASHPER

In his most recent multiple works he has combined an abstract painting with its copy by mounting one on top of the other in a type of Siamese twin orientation. This screwing together of image and original is a curious twist on the parlour pursuit known as ‘en abyme’, in which a painting represents itself within itself. Here Dashper tests the relationship between an object and its copy, just like in his work of 20 years prior, and suggests that an images is only ever chimerically linked to that which it imitates, that the representation relationship is a forced one, only made possible by fixatives such as screws.

It is no coincidence that much of Dashper’s work from the last 20 years is in multiple format. Just as a good chicken lays more than one egg, a ‘good’ idea according to Dashper, will have multiple outcomes. And, if what 19th Century Canterbury sheep farmer-cum-writer – Samuel Butler said is correct, that ‘a hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg’, then artists are the art’s way of sustaining itself. Exactly like many many artists before, from Vincent van Gogh to Gordon Walters, Dashper chooses, as the fancy takes him, to make his art again and again.

Mark Kirby, 2006