The paintings of David Wallage explore the idea of memory. The paintings are composed of interlocking webs of delicate horizontal and vertical skeins of semi-transparent pigment, interrupted by the organic flow of dripped paint, which travels across the previously laid network, like fresh neural pathways staking a claim through the grey-matter of the brain.

Every painting is worked out meticulously. Each one began life in its own separate notebook in which the artist has mapped out every element, and the precise visual ingredients. It could be said that these working notebooks are in themselves a kind of memory of the resulting paintings.

The paintings in this exhibition are as close a visual depiction of memory as we are likely to see. The mix of structural, hard-edged elements and hazy, soft-focus elements create an almost hallucinatory mimicry of remembrance. Several of the works feature metallic aluminium strips which transect the surface, reminding us of the suspected role of that particular metal in the advance of Alzheimers' disease - that great disrupter of memory.

An early influence for Wallage was the great minimal abstractionist Agnes Martin, and there are echoes of her grids and strips within this work; but Wallage's concerns are 'fuller' and more nuanced; his direction is often more 'playful', and in many ways more human, which is entirely more fitting for subject matter of this current exhibition. 

Steve Cox (an extract from his article entitled 'The Anatomy of Memory')