David Caines’s mischievous paintings examine the human world of culture, drawing on imagery from early film and photography, art history and education, theatre, dance and performance. He occasionally subverts or undermines this wistful imagery by inserting unwelcome intruders such as monsters, clowns, bears, cave dwellers and dolls – time tinkerers from other eras. Recently his paintings have recorded the goings-on in an imaginary art academy, lost somewhere in the middle of the 20th century. There is something off kilter with this particular institution: sculptors carve demonic idols and gnomes, creatures lurk in the studios, and the life models are extinct humans from the Pleistocene age.