JONATHAN TRAYTE
Akara Contemporary
1980
Jonathan Trayte, graduated with a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art in 2010 from the Royal Academy of Arts, and in 2014 he received a B.A (Hons) degree in Fine Art from the Kent Institute of Art and Design.
Trayte’s work explores cultivation and consumption, where his aluminium cut-outs and painted bronze sculptures features imagery that resembles confectionary and food. With his past culinary experiences and thinking of food as a basic material, he uses castings and facsimiles to examine the many ways in which we perceive and utilise our resources.
His approaches in making sculptures are informed by the colours used in food displays and packaging but more specifically by the science of perception and how it is used to manipulate consumer’s decision-making process. His attempt by incorporating diverse influences from glossy synthetic surfaces or product advertising, is to form a discourse that explores our innovative abilities to manage and manipulate both the built and natural world. Using contrasting materials like ceramic, bronze, aluminium, vinyl, resin, PU foams, pigmented rubbers, iron or steel, his works responds to our complex system. Trayte’s works are often covered in meticulously painted layers, giving the work a pop status that is seductive and alluring at times. The striking assemblages can stand magnificently as both, an aesthetic object and a representation of our burgeoning consumer culture.