Rework/Replay
27th October – 12th November 2006
Rework/Replay brings together four artists whose work celebrates or reacts to notions of the iconic. They re-work and re-play their reflective views of the world, its constructed idols and modern icons, mapping the visual through the language and conditions of painting. These paintings, shown together, trace their own threads, relationships, and individual histories, and explore the visual constructions of truth and reality.
Natalie Dowse
Natalie Dowse uses photographs taken directly from the television screen, which have been resurrected from old video footage. Countless copying and recopying has degraded this imagery. This source material allows Dowse to access events otherwise unavailable, in this case the Eastern Bloc gymnasts of the 70s and 80’s. Dowse examines notions of documentation and associated memory and by using secondary sources she can take ownership of the image and ‘steal’ any experience, suggesting narratives and memories whether real or artificially constructed.
Mike Bartlett
Mike Bartlett’s paintings feature the ‘iconic’ works of other artists, recorded incognito, within iconic gallery buildings- the modern temples that house this work. Bartlett is interested in the irony of this subject: paintings of paintings and paintings of people looking at paintings inside galleries, but he also recognises a need to respond to his sub-conscious to express his secret, anxieties and desires through the sub texts of his work.
Alex Michon
Alex Michon paints images of old rockers and then begins to strip away the definition of the image. The paintings become ever more ephemeral and ghost-like as she endeavours to remove any trace of the subject's iconic status. These images are pared down to their bare essence becoming the 'beloved' starting points for the transformative nature of painting. ‘Blason Populaire’ is a folkloric term characterising a group of which one is not a member. Such forms may assign particular characteristics to particular groups and play upon conventional stereotypes like the “dumb blond” or “the spick”. These Dandies are culled from a re-imagined world of rockabilly desire.
Ron Brooker
Ron Brooker's work comments upon the notion of ‘Global Cloning’ that affects our everyday lives. He plays with the idea of 'sameness' that infringes on our daily routines - most towns and cities in this country (and beyond) have the same supermarkets, shopping centres, offices and homes These brands and corporate identities become the modern icons of our society. His approach is somewhat scientific as he sets about constructing the paintings with the tonal ranges selected using a light meter set at 25%.
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