Jonathan Hobin’s Photographs From ‘In The Playroom’ Are Macabre Re-enactments Of Headline Sories

moray mair | Photography | May 8, 2013

Jonathan Hobin‘s photos from ‘In The Playroom’ are a weird series of pictures depicting children re-enacting some of the biggest headlines of recent years; 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the madness that is North Korea, Princess Diana’s death and so on.

What makes the series so macabre, dark, even sinister is that the scenes are set up as a role play in children’s rooms. Like any kid Hobin has built these ghastly headlines into a game using props such as dolls, plastic toys and stuffed animals. The result is a tableau that is complex, fun, bright, colourful and gaudy, a series of juxtapositions all banging off each other creating lively images that make us question our attitude towards the true tragedy of what lies beneath the joy of the spectacle. Which is exactly the point.

Hobin wants us to rethink the headline news, how we receive information from the media, how we digest news. In short the the series delineates the question of how far our current cultural climate alters and infiltrates our society.

54 total views, 0 today

Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondo’s Paintings Confront Us With The Reality Of Africa

moray mair | Art and design | May 8, 2013

Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondo‘s paintings push us, confront us with the reality of living in Africa rather than our preconceived notions of what Africa - and in particular The Democratic Republic Of The Congo – is both politically and socially about, work that comes out of a desire to create a new story based on ideas that are not part of the language of colonialism. His paintings, sculptures, performances and installations created in direct opposition to colonial and academic art.

Bondo’s technique of using cuttings from fashion magazines to compose figures, bodies, portraits and heads is a means for him to recreate a new society, to question the multiplicity of race and the various challenges arising from this multiplicity. It is a visual manifestation of the chaos reflected in current political and socio-economic trends in Africa and across the World.

60 total views, 0 today

Amy Sherald’s Portraits Address Race In America

moray mair | Art and design | May 6, 2013

Amy Sherald‘s paintings give a fascinating insight into how an artist tackles issues of race in the context of the visual image. The question of race is complex, a torrid mix of history, economics, sociology, religion and politics and while we may believe we live in a post racial society the fact is we don’t. It is ever present, quietly fermenting, an undercurrent of hatred passed down through generations.

These paintings by Sherald are, in some ways, more relevant than ever before. In a world of recession and the failure of Capitalism racial tensions will always rise, blame will be passed and those without the historic opportunities afforded to the privileged, the educated, the wealthy will fall to the bottom. Left in a hopeless position.

So look closely. Examine these portraits. Notice the lack of skin colour. Sherald has removed it and replaced it with grey. Her subjects neutralised yet still black, still recognisably not white. In juxtaposition to this she has placed them in an ambiguous space, out of context, in roles befitting traditional white stereotypes. It is a simple exercise but has wit and an underlying truth that asks us questions the very second we lay our eyes on the picture. What is wrong with the picture? Why does the portrait seem out of kilter? What is nagging at me? What don’t I get?

These are the initial questions, the objective questions relating directly to the image. But what of the bigger picture? That of race, class. What does our reaction to Sherald’s portraits say about us, about society?

58 total views, 0 today

Linda Sterling’s Collages Are Punk In Politics And Style

moray mair | Art and design | May 3, 2013

Linda Sterling has been making collages since the explosion of Punk in the mid 70′s. A radical feminist for decades her montages are made up of images taken from mens porno mags and women’s fashion, household and cookery magazines have been highlighting the cultural expectations of women and the treatment of female body as a commodity. Each image both a monstrous creation of insatiable desire and a commercially motivated reinforcement of constructed identities and expectations of behaviour

For anyone that was, or is, into punk band, The Buzzcocks, it was Sterling who made their iconic image for the single ‘Orgasm Addict’ in 1977 (which I’ve included here – it’s the third image) showing a naked woman with an iron for a head and grinning mouths instead of nipples.

111 total views, 1 today

Dimitris Polychroniadis ‘Repent’ Is A Surreal Diorama Series That Looks At Greece In a Time Of Recession

moray mair | Art and design | May 1, 2013

Dimitris Polychroniadis diorama series called ‘Repent’ – you can see his previous work which I posted up year last year in the lead up to the Greek general election – looks at the harsh realities of Capitalism, injustice and the reality of living in Greece in a time of austerity and social deprivation. This is the work of a man who lives everyday with the consequences of the recession, unemployment, poverty and rising extremism across Greece and the rest of the developed world.

They are humorous and surreal artworks yet have a serious point, make for sobering viewing and ask the question:

Can the deconstructive forces of a crisis become the motivation for self awareness, both individually and collectively? Humour, romance and dark surrealism are the vehicle via which we attempt to explore the meaning of Repentance.

72 total views, 2 today

Chen Wenling’s Sculptures Of Pigs Satirise Gluttony, Greed And Corruption

moray mair | Art and design | April 25, 2013

Chen Wenling‘s sculptures are biting, satirical characters that live in a world of greed, gluttony and economic imperialism. His large scale caricatures of pigs and other animals familiar motifs in the world of art. However, it is the pigs that seem to suffer most from Wenlings jokes. Like many artists – in particular George Orwell who famously used them in his 1945 classic Animal Farm – Wenling sees pigs as fitting representatives of human corruption and greed. Just look at them; smug, self satisfied, grotesque caricatures dressed up as corrupt officials, vain socialites, power hungry individuals with inflated views of themselves.

77 total views, 0 today

Ian Davis Paintings Of An Entropic World Are Both Funny And Frightening

moray mair | Art and design | April 22, 2013

Ian Davis‘ paintings aren’t a good reflection of life, society and the politics of globalisation. And why should they be. How could they be. Just look at the photographs of Andreas Gursky and you’ll understand where Davis is coming from. You might say that Davis paints situations from an entropic World, the inevitable failure of a system, the degeneration of society, the fall of the individual, the human. The soul.

Yes, these are funny pictures, full of wit with their identikit groups of people, gargantuan temples of industry, repetitive patterns and pointless tasks but look closer and you’ll get the sense of an underlying totalitarianism in every painting. And still you may think that these illustrations are of a world far removed from your gilded life but you’d be wrong. That’s what makes them frightening. Davis is merely creating the story of our collective life. We are in this situation now, we live it, eat it, drink it, consume it. Everyday. We are the three monkeys who see no evil, spealk no evil, hear no evil.

60 total views, 0 today

Charlie Anderson’s Pop Art Paintings Have A Real Punk Art Style

moray mair | Art and design | March 19, 2013

Charlie Anderson‘s pop art paintings that mash up photo realism and urban pop art with a street art aesthetic. His work is a throwback to the punk art to the 70′s except that these are not advertisements for some gig or album and they certainly aren’t cut and paste collages. These are paintings and screen prints all laboriously put together by hand.

What I love about his work is the deception. You assume everything you see is re-appropriated from somewhere else such as advertising billboards, newspaper cuttings and street flyers – that he’s merely taken existing images and played with them – when infact he’s taking you for a ride. They’re not real at all. What you’re actually seeing is invented campaigns, posters and advertisements that reflect his relationship to society, how he interprets his position in it, how he responds to it.

89 total views, 2 today

David Thomas Smith: Anthropocene @ Copper House Gallery, Dublin From 21st March – 16th April

moray mair | Photography | March 14, 2013

David Thomas Smith‘s ‘Anthropocene’ photo series will be showing at The Copper House Gallery next week and looks at how global landscapes have been transformed by human action and activity. They are incredibly beautiful pictures that belie their political importance. For Smith has offered us a series of images that are more social commentary, a political stand, a scream about global capitalism and the destruction of the environment through man’s insatiable appetite for product, for oil, precious metals and technological advancement.

Smith has cleverly counterpointed his photo composites by juxtaposing the old with the new, by weaving 1000′s of thumbnail images from Google Maps – which are reconstructed piece by piece using Photoshop – together in a picture that is reminiscent of Persian rug designs. In particular he draws from the Afghan weavers use of the rug to record their experiences with vivid images of the war torn land that surrounds them.

112 total views, 3 today

Afton Almaraz’s Photographs From His ‘Free Trade Riots’ Series Is a Document Of Anti-Government Protests

moray mair | Photography | March 8, 2013

Afton Almaraz‘s photo series ‘Free Trade Riots’ is a few years old, five to be precise and is as relevant today as ever. Free Trade agreements are a hotly contested global issue with many of those living on low incomes losing out while the rich get richer in the name of market capitalism.

However in this case the people won. The issue at stake was the lifting of the ban on American beef in South Korea – it was in place since 2003 after the outbreak of Mad Cow Disease – in April, 2008. The opneing up of the Korean beef market to America brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets of Seoul in protest of the government’s decision. It was the largest anti – government demonstration in over 20 years and resulted in hundreds of protesters and police getting injured.

Protesters accused President Lee Myung-bak of risking the health of Korean’s in his eagerness to please the United States and on 18th June he formally apologised saying:

I should have paid attention to what people want. Sitting on a hill near Cheongwadae on the night of June 10, watching the candlelight vigil, I blamed myself for not serving the people better.

109 total views, 0 today

Nicola Wermers Collages Turn The Banal Surface of Consumer Culture Into An Abstract Landscape

moray mair | Art and design | February 28, 2013

Nicola Wermers collages might be abstract images but they are, nevertheless, instantly recognisable as physical materials used in the making of consumer goods, products that play their part in the neverending cycle of lifestyle fashions so often portrayed in design, fashion, advertising and architectural magazines.

However unlike other artists Wermers doesn’t reduce her work to a polemic rather she creates new images and spaces, turns the banal surface of capitalistic culture into a beautiful abstract landscape in which we can contemplate the reality of consumerism, of objects, of stuff. In short she destroys the commercial entity of the object and turns it into an aesthetic image that is worthy in and of itself.

Nicola Wermers doesn’t make pretty pictures like many artists do. Rather she makes images that have a grounding in philosophy, have a political reason for existing, could be seen as scream of sorts, a rail against the omnipotent system in which we live.

94 total views, 1 today

Esther Naor’s Sculptures, Installations And Videos Look At Illness, Pain And Healing

moray mair | Art and design | February 27, 2013

Esther Naor’s new site specific sculptures and installations address the body’s betrayal through pain and illness and looks at our complex ways of coping, physically and emotionally, with slow healing processes. The work is part of a larger series which she’s been working on for over two years making everything from abstract sculptural works, using white gauze dipped in red wax, to more figurative works comprising of wax heads in various stages of distress.

Her latest exhibition, ‘Side Effects’, which is currently on show, is the third part of the trilogy and has a selection of installations, videos and sculptural objects. However, unlike her previous exhibitions in this trilogy the work is focussed on herself with a series of self – portraits expressing a wide range of emotions; somber to humorous, personal to universal and realistic to fantastic, all of which are imbued with irony and critical of the omnipotent drug industry and its effects on our general well being.

‘Side Effects’ is part of an ongoing process, an investigation into feminine, cultural and social stereotypes as well as issues pertaining to identity, belonging and gender through sculpture and installation which she makes using ready-made objects and materials such as cloth, rice and soft wax. In particular her work has been influenced by the writings of Feminist icon Luce Irigaray who propagated the notion that women should find their own language, a new vocabulary not born of men.

119 total views, 0 today

Yao Lu’s New Landscapes Photo Montages Look At The Destruction Of The Environment Using Chinese Painting Motifs

moray mair | Photography | February 22, 2013

Yao Lu’s ‘New Landscapes’ photo series is a treatise on environmental destruction but it is through a Chinese lens that Lu wakes us up to this global ecological disaster. The conceit that underlies this series is Lu’s deconstruction of formal Chinese painting aesthetics which he uses in his digitally reconstructed photos of rubbish hidden under green protective nets. What we see first are idyllic rural mountain landscapes shrouded in the mist. It is only on closer inspection that the truth appears. These are mutated landscapes, the result of decades of rampant urbanisation and industrial disasters, an all to common story in the history of globalisation.

To make these montages Lu takes photos of Chinese landfills covered in green protective netting and then digitally adds in motifs most commonly found in Chinese traditional paintings such as; mist, trees, waterfalls, pagodas and so on. But rather than inspiring, illuminating and creating something mythical Lu creates a picture of helplessness. As if there is nothing we can do but record, acknowledge and succumb to the inevitability of the destruction of nature. All at once Lu juxtaposes the past and future, one we can never go back to, the other already here.

There is alot of detail in these images from the green netting commonly found on building sites to the buildings, signs and planes flying overhead to the Great Wall Of China and the beautiful trees that have been depicted in Chinese paintings for millennia. This is work that forces you to think, to contemplate, to realise the consequences of our actions, of waste, consumerism, wanton greed. One could say that nature has become a commodity and this is the most salutary reminder of them all.

95 total views, 2 today

Nadine Boughton’s Collages Are True Adventures In Better homes

moray mair | Art and design | February 19, 2013

Nadine Boughton‘s collages from her ‘True Adventures In Better Homes’ came into being by accident. There was no deliberate agenda. Like all ‘eureka moments’ the genesis for the series came to her when browsing through a collection of vintage men’s adventure magazines at a flea market. You know the kind; derring – do, dashing men and damsels in distress, World War II, King Kong, giant animals and nature as a beast to be tamed.

She took these ridiculous images of manliness and put them into interiors found in magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens. What you get is an energetic image full of diametric opposition. This is a true picture of 50′s and 60′s stereotyping, it lays bare the attitudes of an era when America was under the shadow of the McCarthy era, advertising, sexual repression, World War II and the Korean War. It is a salutary reminder that the good ol’ days weren’t all that good and that we can never be lackadaisical about the fight for equality, advertising or State policy.

86 total views, 1 today

Mark Dean Veca’s Paintings Portray The Collapse Of The American Dream

moray mair | Art and design | February 14, 2013

Mark Dean Veca‘s pop paintings portray the collapse of the American dream and consumer society itself. His images familiar corporate logos and cartoon characters associated with American culture, re-appropriated, subverted and stripped of all their power.

What’s interesting about Veca is that the substance of his work is about contemporary society, politics, economics and justice but his his style emanates from a time past, an analogue age, his influences heavily indebted to the likes of MAD magazine, Popeye and Zippy the Pinhead as well as artists such as Ed Ruscha and Dr Seuss. It’s this juxtaposition of style and substance that turn his vitriol about American capitalism into a unique aesthetic that pulls a century of American culture together onto one canvas.

Advertising iconography plays a large part in these paintings with Veca co-opting logos and patriotic insignias, subverting their meaning and twisting their self serving meanings into dark sinister images that he renders in his familiar psychedelic style with its flat colours, bubbly line and full frontal compositional quality that reminds you that Veca is also an accomplished street artist and mural painter, a street artist working indoors.

101 total views, 1 today

Page 1 of 612 3 4 5 6

search our blog

check out our skills bank

Check out our bank where we pool all our skills for the benefit of our mutantspace members. It's free to join and registration only takes a minute

submissions to our blog

we're always delighted to publish your work in our blog. So If you want your art seen by thousands of people then go to our submissions page to get more info