Matthew Picton: Cultural Mapping

British-born Matthew Picton’s maps are medieval in feeling, mixing text and topography with cultural reference points and history. These huge works of cut paper read like maps but feel like tapestries or wall hangings, objects that you could lose yourself in for hours. In El Dorado he contrasts hot-red radial distance lines with a lush jungle-shantytown mash-up. In another work, he looks at the Congo through Western eyes, through Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and its cinematic retread, Apocalypse Now.