Billy Myles-Berkouwer is currently studying on the MA Painting programme at the Royal College of Art. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the US, Costa Rica, and the UK.

"Technologically advanced society presents a world of finished, simulated, and engineered products and a highly saturated market of images and information. At the same time, the nature of these images, objects and systems is increasingly distant; veiled by categories, experiences and assumptions.

Billy Myles-Berkouwer's work speaks to this context. Incorporating industrial and digital methods of object and image production into the process of painting and blending these with the traditional craft of painting, Myles-Berkouwer’s work blurs the boundaries between human and machine production. The works are tangible, human and at the same time conceal aspects of their nature. The work begs the question - is it a painting? Was it produced by a human, a machine, a cyborg?

In a context where the drive for accumulation, productivity, and efficiency is primary, there are few places where a deep relationship between subject and image-object can form. In painting, there is a deep connection between the object and subject, and Myles-Berkouwer’s work plays with this relationship. Painting becomes a site for reconsidering our relationship with the world and each other.

There is a focus on the alienated nature of objects and images in the work, which seeks to question what meaning emerges when objects are crafted or chosen in the creative act to become a subject of sustained consideration, study and reflection.