For his residency at A - DASH, Luke Burton will open his studio to show a series of small scale works-in-progress that reference the visual language of jewellery and extend his interest in concepts around decoration, theatricality and style in relation to contemporary art and society.

The objects in the space vary in terms of medium: from found and adapted costume and mass-produced jewellery, to approximately constructed assemblages, enamelled paintings and painted objects, 'low´ or discarded materials are often employed to service an alternately convincing or, in contrast, thinly veiled form of illusionism. Brass paper clips, thin sheet metal, sandpaper, scraps of wood, hobby craft hordes, tin foil, and other found or ready-to-hand materials are sprayed with gold paint to aid this illusion. There are also a number of small scale paintings on brass using various forms of enamelling, which is a technique for jewellery as well as icon painting. These paintings elicit an intimate proximity to the work through their small scale and surface textures, suggesting they should be touched and held in the hand, placed in the pocket, or on a shelf and, consequently, are more akin to Ex-Voto offerings, miniatures or simple decorative objects than any of the grander traditions of painting.

The works are shown on velvet-lined panels that suggest borrowed display strategies: part-jewellery shop, part-market stall, part-museum. This method of display suggests a rationalised and composed relationship between the constituent objects but also the aesthetically driven frame of the market or shop window. While there are recurring themes in terms of symbolism and imagery - representations of masculinity, sporting medals and pins, classical and expressionistic references to style - the objects within each panel elude specific narratives as such. Instead, there is an open, contradictory system of association, one that moves from playful formalist and abstract arrangements to culturally loaded symbols within rigorous classical orders.