'Vacant lots are odd and lovely places found in both urban and rural districts. Starting out as a more or less cleared space a lot will grow and develop like some giant bacon, onion potato pie, layer upon layer folding and mixing confined within an indifferent conventional surrounding. In and on such conjugal sights comparatively unrestricted natural growth may enjoy an often long term relationship with the detritus of manufactured productivity, Herstory and History. Plaintive, achingly beautiful individual places. It comes as no surprise to learn that it is their lot to be dismissed as "eyesores" by the eyesright.

In ECHOES those ragged patches survive fitfully, boxed in by clearly defined 'capital' parts, forced to give way to development and emphatic construction only to become renascent elsewhere, confirming that despite the march and machinations of time the thousand weed Reich will live on.'

- Jeff lnstone

Echoes, Jeff Instone's new work at Matt's Gallery is a painting in four parts. The work evokes, on a monumental scale, and through the use of the written word, a musical score or blackboard on which traces of previous markings show through alongside newer marks. Words are used as notation and sensation, the density of texture hiding and revealing visual echoes and repetitions.

The work is based upon repetitive use of notes from an essay by the artist entitled The Significance Of The Vacant Lot, superimposed with chapter headings from Conan Doyle's story of The Poison Belt, in which the entire world becomes a vacant lot with the exception of a sealed boudoir overlooking the South Downs.