Artists: Reece Adair, Keith Ashcroft, David Ballantyne, Andrew Bracey, Kate Dunn, Simon Foxall, David Gledhill, Gareth Griffith, Mary Lou Lawless-Gill, Andrea Medjesi-Jones, Dougal McKenzie, Paula Newton, Alex Roberts, Wayne Robinson, Luke Skiffington, Geraldine Swayne, Michael Stubbs, Mikey Thomas
The Problem with People is an exhibition of 18 painters, focusing on different ways that artists deal with the figure in painting today. The title refers to the difficulties and challenges often associated with the figure in painting, both in a literal or representational sense, but also in philosophical, ethical and material terms.
The idea of (the) painting – which is not a ‘person’ – performs as a kind of surrogate or stand in for the body. This enables artists to see and re-see themselves through painting, be it through locating the figure inside pictorial space, emphasising the figure beyond the stretcher, notions of the figure with or without a body, the figure as gesture, a shape, a place, an outline, an anthropomorphic object, or through material itself.
For this exhibition I had the opportunity to show a brand ne piece made from new materials and which consisted of sprayed stencils onto builders dust sheets which contained the spilled detritus (household paints and tinted floor varnishes) of previous studio activities.
This new and major move in my studio activity, although process-based and still ustlising found signage in opposition to poured paints, offers an entirely different 'sensation' of finish - the painting takes on a much less colourful and seductive patina which is exacerbated by the utilitarian use of the spray paints onto the builders dust sheets (with all the added social and popular cultural implications of what those material's refer to).
