OVERLAP
Overlap (Michael Denton and Anna McCrickard) are an electronic art duo who create atmospheric audiovisual performances and installations. They have developed a style outside film, TV and video art - a way of abstracting and combining imagery that has a musical or painterly logic rather than a narrative or concept-based one. Michael is also a painter, his work speaking the same evocative language as his moving image videos.
Overlap have worked with the likes of The Chemical Brothers, Carl Cox and Pete Tong, and their work has been screened at the ICA, BFI and Tate Modern. They have also released six albums and four EPs, collaborating with Andy Dragazis (Blue States) and vocalist Eros.
Michael Denton's painting practice draws on and complements his audiovisual work. The multi-perspective viewpoints and textured surfaces of his canvases, variously appearing as rock formations, weather patterns or satellite views, recall the landscape tradition of the sublime.
"I think of my painting process as ‘alluvial romanticism’. Whether working with the liquid dynamics of paint or live visual mixing (VJ-ing), avoiding immediate interpretation is important, aiming to create art that gives something different each time you return to it. For both the visual and musical pieces, the right texture seems to trigger a legitimate motif – with the music we call it melodic minimalism, which like the painting is very much about distillation - hopefully arriving at something that whilst easy on the ear/eye, has plenty of triggers for the imagination. In a world of ubiquitous, immediately interpretable imagery, a crucial purpose for abstraction is a kind of universal map of the personal."