Bebis N Buhhead

Ashley examines the increasingly enmeshed relationship between the physical and digital realms, questioning what working slowly or methodically with paint can convey within our instantaneous, hypermediated contemporary visual culture. She tests the hybrid reality’s tensions, including rough versus delicate, flat versus dimensional, and situated versus isolated, through material decisions such as emoji-shaped surfaces, flat colours, and diverse paint application. By articulating how the physical and digital vessels of visual culture steer each other, she exposes the interplay between Technoromantic constituents of emotional significance and technological complexity.

Ashley demonstrates paint as a translative medium that ‘devirtualises’ technology. In some works, she analyses how emojis shift as visual subjects when situated in the physical realm, away from their digital spaces. By using emojis as readable entry points, she investigates how painting draws out their performances, and conversely, how emojis inform cognitive processing. In other works, she subtly engages digital culture ideas like selective remixing, hovering, flatness, resolution, and distortion within offline images. This strategy explores how material decisions, such as surface cutouts, blending, rapid mark-making, image manipulation, and installation embody digitality. By rearticulating hypermediation, Ashley interrogates contemporary visual culture, enabling paint to become conversant with networked technologies and emerging ways of seeing.