Richard Walker's new exhibition at Curwen Gallery is full of light, energy and saturated colour. After a subdued period of reflection and memory in response to the 7/7 bombings in London, Walker's latest paintings are vibrant and direct.

In the series 'America Is Waiting' Walker retraces his travels in the USA  over 30 years combining old Super-8 footage, postcard images and selected texts with the videos and digital technology of post-9/11 America. They are a mass of cross-cultural references from his own personal past to the global impersonal present.

Even brighter are the 'constructed' collage/paintings of Tobago, inspired by two visits to the island. These are often crudely made from corrugated cardboard and found materials and splashed with bright colour and have a freshness and simplicity that acts as a counterpoint to his darker visions of dystopian America.

Graphic motifs such as circles, ovals, stars, crosses and grids recur throughout, and there is a spacial depth created by layering and overpainting, often suggesting 'a memory' of the image beneath.

Walker says, of his techniques ' The shorter the journey between sketchbook and finished piece of work, the better'.

FULL COLOUR CATALOGUE AVAILABLE with an essay by Corinna Lotz.

'Normal Activity'

"Less Choice, Better Things'