Returning to Paris, to show my work there for the first time in a decade, is a way of also returning to other times and places.

The ten paintings, made in the last five years, not only illuminate particular journeys (to North Africa, Tibet and Central America) but also reveal a recurring impulse, to excavate the ‘geographical unconscious’ and explore the many layers of history buried beneath the surface matter of these places. Brought together in one place, and viewed at a certain physical and emotional distance (that is, away from the self and the studio, in another space and another city), the paintings display a kind of circular narrative, about the life that feeds the painting that feeds the life to come.

Luke Elwes, Peintures récentes. Galerie hotel Le Marceau-Bastille, Paris. 30 April – 30 September 2009