PULSE, New York
27-30 March 2008
Vane presents Jock Mooney and Flora Whiteley, at PULSE art fair, New York, USA.
Jock Mooney’s work explores the cultural outpourings of the human mind, whether his own or that of the world at large. His work can be seen as concerned with the liberation of the human spirit through confronting us with our own everyday ridiculousness, an anarchic and never-ending project of emancipation that attempts to break apart oppressive and redundant forms of thought and clear a path for the imagination. For example, ‘Inventory’ (2004-present day) is a collection of trestle tables piled high with tiny models meticulously crafted by the artist himself. Like the contents of a dysfunctional Kinder Surprise egg, this collection of bastardised ‘toys’ – effigies of political, historical, mythical and religious figures, cartoon characters, and the like – coalesces into a rabble of votive figurines, in turn creating what might be described as a kind of ‘ritual topography’, each figure a potential harbinger of fear, threat or ridicule. With their exaggerated and distorted physical characteristics, they appear offered in a kind of appeasement to an unknown deity, an alarming appeal for release from some unspeakable affliction.
Flora Whiteley’s painting is involved in two lines of research. The collecting and collating of images is one and a study of the techniques of mark making, composition, colour and layering of paint is the other. The latter preoccupation is fed by an instinctive reaction to the drama and dynamic within the image. Her approach to painting is very experimental (in quite a scientific sense) and is assisted by close observation of other painters’ techniques. This manipulation of paint is often expressive, sometimes referential. More recently, she has started to produce drawings, working mainly from the mediated collections of images that she has amassed over time, and making simple studies from these where she investigates what it is that makes a particular image arresting. This method allows her to make decisions about the presentation, choice and meaning of images whilst freeing up her painting in order to study these same ideas in more depth and technically, in terms of colour, composition etc.
Pier 40
West Side Highway
West Houston
New York
NY 10014
USA
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