Oliver Jeffers

Coinciding with his Measuring Land And Sea exhibition at Lazarides Rathbon, artist Oliver Jeffers discusses his Dipped Paintings project, exploring the practice of portraiture as well as time’s confounding effects on memory.

In 2012, Jeffers embarked on an ambitious artistic pursuit to explore simultaneously the practice of portraiture as well as time's confounding effects on memory. Submerging his carefully rendered portraits into vats of brightly coloured paint over a series of performances, these "dipped paintings" vibrate between creation and loss. The portraits are neither seen nor photographed prior to their dipping, so the sole documentation of the unobscured pieces are the memories and testimonies of those present the moment they are lowered into the paint.