Stephen Giblett, Paris, 2013, Oil on linen, 71 x 97cm

Low Fidelity or ‘Lo-Fi’ is a term commonly used to describe a type of music that contains technical flaws, often due to poor quality or low budget recording equipment.

It was considered to be a movement that was against ‘High Fidelity’ recordings, commonly used in Punk Rock(often without intention but for mere practical reasons) from the 70s and in Indie music from the mid-90s. Lo-Fi reveals something about the time and place in which the music was recorded and it is considered by some to be more ‘authentic’ than High Fidelity recordings.

Stephen Giblett’s recent paintings in Low Fidelity draw a parallel between Lo-Fi music and low-resolution imagery taken from iPhone screen-shots and the Internet. The technical flaws from the original files provide avenues for creativity in that they create a distance between the ‘idea’ of what is seen and what is actually presented –  a shift from idealistic photorealism to freedom at the foot of abstraction.