Conor Kelly’s show at CCA’s Intermedia Gallery marks something of a departure from his previous work. Rather than looking at history and historical characters, here Kelly takes apes and monkeys as his subject, using images from the internet and rendering them realistically in paint. These works will be shown alongside a series of abstract paintings.

‘This show is a little bit different,’ the Glasgow-based artist says. ‘It’s less about history and more about the function of painting. In some cases it’s abstract painting and in some cases it’s more like portraiture. I’ve worked a lot with history before but this is more about asking what these paintings are doing right now.’

Central to the exhibition is the way in which people perceive meaning where there is none. Kelly has used extracts from Breakthrough by the psychologist Konstantin Raudive who, in the 1960s, attempted to record the voices of the dead, and instead rediscovered the notion of apophenia, or pareidolia. ‘It’s an example of where you hear what you want to her. It’s that notion of what exactly is there and what do you just perceive to be there? This show is considering the social aspect of painting and trying to tie in these notions of what’s actually there and what isn’t.’

CCA, Glasgow, Fri 19 Sep–Sat 4 Oct.