▶ NEW IN THE STOCKROOM: ROBERT BOYNES 'URBAN SIMULATION - HAZE'

Robert Boynes, 'Urban Simulation - Haze' 1995,
oil on canvas, 191.5 x 167.5cm

Completed in 1995, 'Urban Simulation - Haze' heralds from a period within the artist's repertoire concerned with the city and urbanised environment. According to Peter Haynes in his book Robert Boynes. Three Decades. A survey of the artist's work from the 1960s to 1990s, the city offered Boynes a "source of complex, searching and highly resonant images... Boynes's city is a city which engages itself with those internal forces which give it character. It also engages with those external forces which imbue it with a state of potentiality, transforming it from an inert unknown mass into an actuality realised through the purposeful action of its inhabitants and through the creative action of the artist."

In this painting, the figure is absent and the focus is on the abstracted and fragmented outlay of the city. Providing an almost topographic view of the buildings and streets, Boynes highlights the visual complexities of the urban environment.