Jason Moad is a painter based in Melbourne. His work deals with the ephemeral; whether presented by the vanishing world of our physical cultural artefacts, the other than human sphere we confront when recognising the agency of the botanical realm or the haunted spaces that are our museums. He says of his work: as a realist painter I deal in contradiction. I produce images that ostensibly portray an objective view of reality but, in truth, of course, this is an illusion; a trick played in pigment and oil on a flat surface. The scenes depicted are completely synthetic, with details drawn from multiple sources and vantage points, rather than a single real place. These disparate elements are, hopefully, woven together in a fashion convincing enough to enable the viewer to suspend their disbelief. In this way a painting can become more than mere reportage – it can allude to something larger and become greater than just the sum of its parts.