During this interactive talk, hear how the artist’s approach to making is informed by our global appetite for consumption and the manipulation of consumer decision-making through advertising. Learn how he examines the ways in which we perceive and utilize natural resources through his signature tongue-in-cheek sensibility. Find out about the Trayte’s recent 2000-mile road trip through the landscapes of the Western US and how the experience impacted his recent body of work MelonMelonTangerine.

About the artist

Jonathan Trayte was born in 1980 in Huddersfield, UK. With a background in sculpture, he received a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from University of the Creative Arts Canterbury in 2004 and a Masters of Fine Arts from Royal Academy Schools in 2010. Trayte combines his broad experiences in other fields—as chef and foundry metal worker—with his keen eye for the obscure, documenting aspects of daily life that would typically go unnoticed. “My aim is to have something obscure and unsettling in the work put against a delicious texture or material. Whether it's a hairy background, some weird ugly bronze cast, or a sexually suggestive neon shape.” Using a wide range of materials, methods and processes, his work reinterprets modern consumer behavior and explores the psychology of desire through surface, material, light and color. The work is a coming together of natural forms and saccharine colors. Glossy synthetic skins of paint, resin or glass give the work a colorful pop status, a chameleon appearance and an almost edible quality.

His work has been included in numerous international exhibitions including Psychotropics, The New Art Centre, Wiltshire, UK (2020); The London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2018); Tropicana, Christies, London (2017), Milk, Christies, London (2016), Polyculture, The Tetley, Leeds, UK (2016); Experiments in Consuming, The Kings School, Canterbury, UK (2016); and The Shoppers Guide, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2015). Recently, Trayte was selected by Sculpture in the City to create a large- scale site-specific installation entitled The Spectacle (2019) in London.  Trayte lives and works in Margate, Kent.