Hayward's paintings are a celebration of hybridity, harmoniously converging art historical and musical references with distinct modes of making. The paintings honor what informs Hayward's personal and artistic narrative -...
Hayward's paintings are a celebration of hybridity, harmoniously converging art historical and musical references with distinct modes of making. The paintings honor what informs Hayward's personal and artistic narrative - rave culture, abstract expressionism, post war British landscape painting and his mother's textile collection.
The paintings' titles directly honor DJs and producers of acid house, hardcore and Detroit techno from the 80s and 90s alongside post war British painters. These dedications hark back to differing eras, converging histories in one site. For Hayward there is a congenial link between bucolic landscapes and rave culture, characterized by a search for the transcendental. This work honours both painter Paul Nash and a duo of Techno Producers from Detroit, Drexciya.
The bottom left part of the painting has two rectangles with cut out chevrons, the unusual fragment nods to the avant-garde movement of vorticism. In this area of painterly flourish, Hayward reimagines a 1941 work, ‘Skylight Landscape’ by Paul Nash. In Hayward’s own versions of quintessential British landscapes, the small scale and great level of detail speaks to his training in Indo-Persian miniature painting. Emulating embroidery, the bottom right section is a textural patterning referencing a Suzani bridal fabric from Uzbekistan.