………..Much of Eaton’s visual influence comes from the flattened space of the screen – from the mediated worlds of film, television and the computer. The bitmap symbols of OUTGO, 2009 for example, are based upon the corrupted code of Eaton’s work; code created when one of the artist’s paintings was fed into the computer and it tried to read it as a text file, rather than that of an image. The fact that the work begins at a point of miscommunication is significant. Eaton consciously attempts to create a kind of digital space in OUTGO; a deeply layered rather than perspectival environment built upon a foundation of dot-screen spray-painted grids. Capturing a sense of a loss of information and the breakdown of communication in its floating, pixelated forms, the painting’s blinking characters also tellingly mimic (in this time of the big GFC [Global Financial Crisis]), the red and green LED feeds of the global stock exchange – abstract information that can nevertheless determine prosperity or poverty, and the power or downfall of nations. Fascinated by the schism between our human (analogue) relationships and an increasingly technological existence, Eaton is interested in the manner in which these changes to communication and our way of being in the world impact upon our empirical reality; how we reconcile our everyday, physical lives with the demands (and potential disappointments) of our new, and supposedly-improved, digital selves.
- Kelly Gellatly 2009 - from catalogue essay 2009 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, National Gallery of Victoria