Article on Fresh Paint exhibition

The use of flat colour, or unmodulated tone is also a tool used by Jun Hasegawa and Ed Harper. HarperÕs interest lies in graphic translation, where a photograph is taken and the simplified using computer imaging until the unity of the image begins to decay. This is then projected onto canvas for painting and scenes of urban waste become organised, clean compositions.

Home is Where the Heart is Pate Ellis Ways of Living Exhibition Catalogue March 1999

Review of Ways of Living exhibition

Rendered with the contrived simplicity of Warhol paint-by-number, HarperÕs Columbia Road is a carefully manipulated still-life, focusing on the hidden abjection of domesticity. Awkwardly uncomfortable, HarperÕs forgotten spaces of Suburban decor make the sight of the unsavoury ÔunseenÕ all the more distressing; creating a fashion from the repugnant.Evidence of human habitation is hermetically sealed. Beautiful, objectified, contextless; the garbage lingers like the forbidden images of pornography. Numbing escapism, [Graham ] Little, [DJ] Simpson and Harper succumb to the spell of the domestic. Their frenzied displaced happiness is subordinate and reflexive to the overwhelming injured boredom. Unseen traces of an unfamiliar emotion whisper softly as a ghost.

Review of Painting Lab exhibition

Another artist exploring the interface between photography and computer imaging is Edward Harper, whose paintings depict piles of rubbish in godforsaken corners of London. Harper takes a photograph and then simplifies it on his computer, building it up from areas of continuous colour before projecting the image onto a large canvas and painting it. Like Sarah MorrisÕs works, the resultant images have an iconic air, but in HarperÕs case they also create a highly ambivalent effect. This ambivalence comes partly from the paintingÕs subject matter: there are limits to how iconic a pile of rubbish can become. But it also comes from the translation of photograph to graphic to painting, which Harper handles very differently from Morris. Whereas Morris uses this translation to make the image simpler and bolder, Harper seems to emphasise the inherent clumsiness of the process and the inadequacy of each transition. The result is that inconsistencies become exaggerated - the lettering of a sign might be well-represented by the process, whereas the sheen on a bin-bag might not be - and the unity of the image starts to decay.

Review of Untitled Painting Show exhibition

Painting, in the Lux gallery? It seems that nothing is untainted by digital media, not even oil on canvas. All four of these artists employ some manner of technology during the production of their work. They scan and invert, equalise and blur, displace and pinch, get lost down the Photoshop cul-de-sac and emerge, somehow with an image intact. But this is not a show of souped up painting-by-numbers. Fractals are out ; in their place is a relatively simple, albeit skewed, take on traditional genres which suggests that the computer is simply another tool. ItÕs often hard to tell exactly where the technology bit occurred. [...] The most enduring images are not paintings at all. Edward Harper scans photos of wheely bins, rubbish sacks and cardboard boxes and ink-jet prints them onto paper to look like delicate gouaches. They make the paintings seem almost leaden. And I never thought IÕd say that.

Article on Mark Sladen featuring the work of Edward Harper

Most intriguing of all, though, is the painting in [Mark] SladenÕs sitting room by Edward Harper, purchased at this yearÕs GoldsmithsÕ MA show. The subject matter is rubbish. The artist has taken a photograph, scanned it into a computer, and remapped it, simplifying the tonal values and interlocking areas. The image is then projected onto the canvas and the artist paints around it. Once again there is some text, and [he] is drawn to the odd relationship between the text and the painting quality. Ò[Harper] brings different images together that donÕt quite gelÓ, he tells me. ÒThe superficial unity of the picture breaks down. It is the complexity of art that interests me, the making of work that is adequate to personal complexity.Ó