Appleton is a painter and artist who explores the progression of industrialization, looking at their effects on urban landscapes and experimenting with different technologies creating immersive experiences.
I love Appleton’s paintings. His limited colours and shapes create an ominous experience, depicting buildings and factories towering above you. They can be seen as portraying anything from the effect growing cities have on our surroundings, to the effect they have on us undermining us by the effect capitalism has on our sanity as a human race. The paintings are really effective and inspirational to my projects and my own painting style, I want to incorporate a more dramatic effect in my paintings and begin emphasizing, appreciating and displaying how much these industrial structures really rise above you.
Appleton is better known however for his interactive installations. For example “whispers in kanji wood’. In this piece, Appleton distributed microphones on trees in a Welsh forest. These solar-powered mics were activated by movement and captured noise from wind, rustling trees, muffled voices and the lingering sounds of mechanics. Much like his painting, this highlights the evolution of man and his effect on the natural world.