Initially, when you see Justin Mortimer’s work “Zuma”, you think of Jerome Lagarrigue’s work blasting out of the walls of Lazarides Rathbone.  Further examination of Mortimer’s work reveals more sophistication and a wider variety of situations than the explosive subversive riots shown by Lagarrigue.

Both are near contemporaries with Mortimer born in 1970 and Lagarrigue born three years later.  They both reflect on a world of chaos and disorder and they both use imagery sourced from the internet and newspapers which they take apart and reassemble in new ways.

Mortimer, however, moves into different areas from Lagarrigue as he explores immigration through images of the camp at Calais and also explores the passion of people holding onto and connecting with each other through the way that their hands clasp and grasp together.  He also adds other abstract images and interpretative layers to his work derived from images found on cracked plasma screens.

Some works focus on pleasant experiences, for example the joy of flowers, while others explore the sinister ways that technology has taken over our world, with vdu’s, phones, tablets and other modern media displacing books and traditional methods of interaction.  While to the innocent they may seem to be communication devices, in reality they control and twist the information and the images which we receive.  Are we any longer able to tell false information from true and how permanent are these images – will they stay with us or will they quickly fade and disappear?