Notes

A graduate of the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Jake Aikman’s earliest seascapes depicted tremulous human figures in open bodies of water, sometimes atop crafts of different sorts. This lot with its horizontal lines of blue is a companion piece to two earlier square-format works, Set Adrift I and II, both painted in 2006–07 and shown as a pair on his second solo exhibition, Echoes, in 2009. The three works all offer an elevated view of an inflatable life raft buoying a lone figure on an expanse of water. The works quoted a contemporary news image, although Aikman’s interest in repeatedly painting the scene flowed from his postgraduate research into repetition, appropriation, copying and the breakdown thereof in paint. This lot was painted a year after he graduated. His 2009 exhibition also included two works quoting Gerhard Richter’s Seascape (Sea-Sea) (1970) and Peter Doig’s Island Painting (2000–01). Aikman abandoned the life-raft archetype in 2011.

Sean O’Toole