Alastair MacKinven adopts a conceptual approach to painting. His abstracted canvases operate as a critical language to deconstruct ideas of power within the art system – the role of the artist, how art is displayed and mediated to the viewer by galleries, and is transacted through the art market and mass media. Pop Was The Sound Of The Bubble Bursting is part of a series called Abstract Capitalist Realism, that deals with issues of art and economy. The ornamental motifs repeated throughout these works are in fact taken from the data protection patterns that line the envelopes of MacKinven’s utility bills and bank statements. MacKinven appropriates the genre of decorative painting as a witty provocation or game, humorously exposing the dilemma of artists perpetually striving for creative integrity while being simultaneously, by default, involved with the practical realities of the art market. MacKinven’s ‘pop’ reference is a pun: on pop as an art movement, the critical systems used to define artistic ‘worth’, and the unsustainable inflation of economic hype.