Unfixed from time and place, with vaporous, mirage-like softness, Armando Chant’s landscapes are ‘instigators for an imaginative engagement,’ he says. They emerge from a gradual process of abstraction that starts with found negatives of early-20th-century landscape photographs. Overlaying multiple negatives, Chant prints a composite image at a large scale and draws onto its surface. He then collaborates with artisans in India to embroider the composition onto linen. When the work returns from the artisans, Chant explains, ‘it is abstracted, changed; it is never what I expect’. The final step is to paint pigmented washes over the fabric, further diffusing the spectral image.

A first-time Wynne finalist, Chant acknowledges his collaborators, Mohammed Waseem, Mohammed Irfan, Mohammed Imran, Mohammed Fahim and Mohammed Tasleem, for the embroidery on this work.