ALTERED
IMAGES
Ovenden Contemporary presents Altered Images, an
exhibition of paintings and photography by four
exceptional male, British Artists from across the UK, who
add to or alter their images in an effort to shift
perception, transcend the 2D or enhance the obvious.
Monomarc
Gareth Buxton
Mike Bell Dip AD.
Hons
Robert Brading
Monomarc
is, rather obviously, a pseudonym for an incredible (but
modest) Artist based in the west of the country. Art
should always have something to say, in our opinion at
least, and Monomarc's images tend to say a great deal in
a very understated way. The way he takes an otherwise
innocuous photograph of a scene, three garages in a row
for example, and then superimposes a very subtle
comment/criticism/observation is immensely skillful and
extraordinarily sharp. Less is definitely more in this
Artists' work, but with one small word, he has the
ability to condemn a huge swathe of middle England for
being mindless consumerists whilst, at the same time,
offering them a ray of hope- a sign that they are perhaps
not alone? His commentary, or rather criticism, is swift
and powerful, but there seems to be compassion, hope
perhaps, behind the criticism.
The
impressive artistic development of Buxton is, in our
opinion at least, squarely attributable to an appalling
car crash he was involved in a couple of years ago. He
admits that, since the accident in 2004 that came within
an inch of taking his life, he has been forced to
re-evaluate his priorities. But it is clear that he is
evaluating much more than that. His earliest work is
explorative, technically proficient and popular. But with
his newer, sculptural work Buxton now relies on his
increasingly elaborate form of expression as a catharsis.
His extraordinary work is becoming more visceral and more
obsessed with the physical. It's as if each moment that
passes since his near-fatal road-traffic accident somehow
brings him closer to understanding the ramifications of
what could have happened on that day. He sees the
fragility of existence and then seems to revel in it.
Buxton is having a sonorous but surprisingly candid
conversation with mortality, perhaps in a way that only
someone who has come so close to it can.
Rob
Brading, born in South Africa in 1959, celebrates the
fundamental differences (and surprising similarities)
between art and technology by fusing them together, often
quite brutally. His work proposes a dichotomy that urges
us to question the boundaries between technology and art.
Inert components are made redundant from their original
communicative function and forced to communicate with us
on a new level. Bradings' obsession with technology is
perhaps unsurprising given that he spent the majority of
his working life in the communications industry after
completing an Engineering Diploma with the South African
Post Office. On moving to England in 1989, he co-founded
a hi-tech software company and won a DTI Smart Award in
1992 for creative technology. With a recent shift in
focus, he now strives to create technological art rather
than creative technology.
Mike
Bell spent 30 years living and working near the striking
coastline of Northumberland and now lives in the
beautiful wilds of Redesdale, not far from the Scottish
borders. This exposure to such striking and inspirational
landscapes has instilled in Bell a fascination with the
patterns of the environment around him. He uses a variety
of found objects, such as sand, driftwood, holographic
foils and even seaweed to convey the complex
relationships between the chaos and order he sees in
these patterns. Bell is in the middle of an extraordinary
professional career and has recently been awarded the
2006 Palm Art Award from Art Domain in Liepzig, Germany,
winning second prize from an impressive selection of
international Artists. He regularly features at the
prestigious Biscuit Factory in Newcastle, along with many
others in the UK and abroad.
Blackfriars Arts Centre
Spain
Lane, Boston, Lincolnshire PE21 6HP
25th September to 26th November 2007
