Tony McCorry’s vibrant and lucid paintings are studies in virtual realism, informed by the aesthetics of simulated environments in computer games. Characterised by calm lighting, clean lines and attractive colours, these disquieting utopias mimic computer-generated imagery, effacing all particulars of time and space.

Taking suburban pubs as their theme, they reflect both on the actual monotony of the landscape and on the idealising power of memory, which turns everything into a picture of itself through the rear-view mirror. Like toy replicas of real objects, they seem to refer to a better world outside time, decay or human use. These drive-by dream…

Tony McCorry’s vibrant and lucid paintings are studies in virtual realism, informed by the aesthetics of simulated environments in computer games. Characterised by calm lighting, clean lines and attractive colours, these disquieting utopias mimic computer-generated imagery, effacing all particulars of time and space.

Taking suburban pubs as their theme, they reflect both on the actual monotony of the landscape and on the idealising power of memory, which turns everything into a picture of itself through the rear-view mirror. Like toy replicas of real objects, they seem to refer to a better world outside time, decay or human use. These drive-by dream worlds are a meditation on the alienation that compels us to create synthetic equivalents to a reality we have ceased to believe in.

Poignant in their pristine anonymity, McCorry’s works portray how we experience place in a modern world that finds us equally at home in the equally uncanny vistas of a virtual or a built environment.

Tony McCorry completed his MA in Fine Art at Coventry University in 2001, and has been teaching in Essex since 1990.

He has exhibited widely in Britain and abroad over the past decade. Recipient of the Creative Ambition Award from West Midlands Arts in 2001, he has just completed a West Midlands Arts funded research project involving documentation of specific areas of social housing in and around major British urban centres.