Jake Walker’s practice is a self-consciously continuous process of creation, with the goal to make paintings with personality, self-sufficiency and autonomy. His intimately scaled paintings are essentially abstract, yet imbued with an awareness of the messiness of life, revelling in the tactility and resourcefulness of the handmade, in opposition to modern systems of mass-production. Incorporating elements of post-war readymades, monochromes and assemblages, Walker often uses found canvases and salvaged board as surfaces upon which to apply painted marks.
His handmade ceramic frames expose an embrace of raw materials, rejecting clean, hard edges in favour of rugged and organic forms. Vestiges of the artist’s hand are displayed in many incarnations via inscriptions of the date and his initials, etched into the paint’s surface – characteristics that reaffirm the works’ handmade origins and document the time and labour of their creation.
Walker has exhibited extensively in Australia and New Zealand since 2009. In 2010 his work was highly commended in the RBS Emerging Artist Award and he won the inaugural Arkley Award at NOTFAIR, Melbourne. Walker’s work is held in the collections of Artbank Australia, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Chartwell Collection (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki), the Wallace Arts Trust, Bowman Collection, the Joyce Nissan collection, as well as private collections in Australia, New Zealand and internationally.