About

Spectral Nation is a collaboration between London based artists Luke Frost, Therese Vandling, and Jon Rundall. Their work is a process-led exploration of screen printing and abstract composition.

Emerging from the dynamic interplay of natural phenomena and the actions of the artists, their unique compositions are an exercise in colour interaction and the manipulation of irregularities within the print process. Compositions evolve across each series of work, with shifting details playing out on a larger scale. With layers applied in a painterly manner, their aleatoric approach builds up visually distorted textures, echoing psychedelic states of consciousness, and showing parallels with layered audio recordings.

Their recent series of works ‘Eraze Phaze’, use an amalgam of masking techniques, monoprinting and hand pulled raw gestural first passes contrasted with smoother blended gradients, creating visual tension and discordant colour combinations in increasingly complex scenes that are ambiguous and open to suggestion by the viewer. These deeply layered compositions evoke psychedelic landscapes, offering distorted, dream-like visions.

The Ambient Haze works are meditations on colour. Using a diffusion dither stencil technique to build up layers of gradients, leading to expansive colour interactions. The central line provides a reference point alluding to a horizon creating a sense of atmospheric perspective.

Spectral Nation formed in the early 2000s in East London. They've exhibited extensively across the UK and internationally, amassing a cult following. Early stalwarts in the DIY arts and music community in East London, their unique, improvised, and experimental works have since become highly sought after.

Between them they have studied at Royal College of Art, London College of Printing (LCC), and Croydon Art College. 

They have exhibited since 2009 with recent solo shows at Gallery 46 Whitechapel and All is Joy, London.

 

Solo Exhibitions

  • Ambient Haze
    Gallery 46, London, 2024
  • Eraze Phaze Sub Lux Berserk Hole
    All Is Joy, London, 2024
  • Spectral Nation/Vague Horizonsss
    Mad Atelier, London, 2018
  • Spectral Nation/Atmospheric Disturbances
    Material, London, 2015
  • Chromotopia Into the Spectral Nation
    Stories, London, 2015
  • Spectral Nation
    Beach London, London, 2014
  • Spectral Nation
    Material, Ludlow, 2013
  • Animorphia
    Camp and Furnace, Liverpool, 2013
  • Spectral Nation
    Galleri Storck, Oslo, 2013
  • Spectral Nation
    Coningsby Gallery, London, 2013
  • Forbidden Onion Zoop
    Material, London, 2012
  • Verboten Zweibeln / Unknown Parts
    London, 2011
  • Bare Bones
    Neu Gallery, December 2009

 

Group Exhibitions

  • Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair: Edition 9
    London from 21 - 24 November 2024
  • Signs and Symbols: From Street Art To High Art
    Lancaster Museum of Art & History, Los Angeles, 2013
  • To London With Love
    Material, London, 2012
  • To Bristol With Love
    Here Gallery, Bristol, 2012
  • Bones, Guns, and Heretics
    Autobahn, Istanbul, 2011
  • People Of Print
    Beach, London, 2011
  • Four Floods
    Concrete Hermit, London, 2011
  • Mother Drucker
    Berlin, 2011
  • New Lexicons Of Dark
    Hoxton Gallery, London, 2011
  • Bare bones 5
    Red Gallery, London, 2011
  • Anti Design Festival
    Neu Gallery, London, 2010
  • Bare Bones 4
    Envoy, New York, 2010
  • Bare Bones 3
    Neu Gallery, London, 2010
  • People Of Print
    Here Gallery, Bristol, 2009
  • Bare Bones 1
    Dazed & Confused, London, 2009