Since graduating from the University Of The West of England in Bristol in 1998, Duncan Jago’s work has undergone a prolonged and continuous process of abstraction.
Duncan’s early – doodle-derived – mark making evolved deliberately into his current way of working; the droid-like figures of his formative, commercial illustration slowly enveloped in ever-deepening layers of colour and shade. These figures have now become almost entirely hidden, remaining as shadowy, compositional elements, specters lurking in the gloom behind the kaleidoscopic vapours of (what might perhaps be) humankind’s vanity and pollution. One senses a narrative, but it remains obscured, teasingly just out-of-view.