The paintings of Jonathan Alibone offer an exploration of the uncertainty and irreconcilable antagonisms inherent in our existence. They are populated with ghosts, and haunted by loss, unconsummated desire, and a nameless longing.
Alibone appropriates images and text from film, magazines, pulp fiction and pornography, setting them adrift from their original contextual moorings. When re-imagined and repositioned, they achieve a new potency, becoming ambivalent signifiers of moral emptiness, scepticism, and self disgust; the viewer is no longer a passive consumer but a voyeur and participant, implicated in a nihilistic culture’s obsessions, perversions, and hunger for meaning.
Currently based in the United Kingdom, Jonathan Alibone is a resident of The Artist's Sanctuary in Northampton, England, and is also one half of ‘Articulating History’ – an ongoing collaborative project created with fellow artist Alexander Small. In addition, Alibone is engaged in several other collaborative ventures, including a stop- motion animation and a graphic novel. He has exhibited widely and his work features in private collections in the UK, Europe, and North America.