Wealleans considers his canvases as “paint farms” that form the base material in all of his work. He then violates the surface by gouging out the paint to reveal the hidden textures below. These pieces of paint are collected to later find their own significance as the material elements of his sculptural work and drawings. Inspired by the traditional techniques of Aboriginal dot painting, Wealleans uses these sculptural dots of paint by grafting them onto each other as well as on the surface of the paper. The paint farm canvases themselves are perceived as a bird’s eye view of a foreign world. The landscape pitted and scarred in a vast expanse of craters: evidence of a visual design that resembles the formal arrangement of alien crop circles and markings.

The curiosity of Wealleans’s work is derived from an ambiguity that results in a multitude of possible interpretations and responses. Elements of both beauty and the beast encompass the same body leading to a simultaneous sense of repulsion and attraction. There is no black or white, simply our perception of the grey zone that exists between these two tonal extremes. Wealleans’s inclusion of found objects invokes a sense of nostalgia for a form of horror that was prevalent in the films and characters from the 60s and 70s. His work is a response to the desensitisation of today’s masses, constantly exposed to ultra-violence in films, television and on the Internet. The process by which he manipulates and distorts a diverse collection of pop horror references from Hitchcock’s The Birds via Mickey Mouse to Aliens, allows him to enact the role of Doctor Frankenstein and explore that which is lurking beneath the surface.