Completed Mixed-Media Piece: 'Fridge 1'

All Images:  'Fridge 1', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Mixed Media, Screen Print, Spray Enamel
& Magnetic Letters On Refrigerator Door, 66 cm X 49 cm, 2017

Following the tease of my previous post, here are some proper images of my just-completed ‘painting’, ‘Fridge 1’.  More than ever, it feels a bit misleading to call such a piece a painting.  Acrylic paints (not to mention more utilitarian surface coatings) certainly play a part in its production, but are more than outweighed by its elements of collage, assemblage and combined media.  And, of course, the choice of a repurposed refrigerator door as a support is at least as significant as the imagery placed upon it.  Without wishing to be too self-aggrandising, I’d like to think this owes more to the tradition of something like Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘Combines’, than to Western easel painting generally.  If it is a painting, there’s definitely more than a bit of that old twentieth century idea of ‘painting as object’ about it, I think.  Ultimately, what real use are any such labels?  It is what it is, then.

As previously outlined, the fridges (more specifically – the abandoned variety which litter my immediate urban surroundings) are a key motif of my ongoing ‘This S(c)eptic Isle’ project.  In that respect, they join such things as the Union flags and tradesmen’s and courier’s vans, (which also feature here).  These feel like more or less clichéd signifiers - not only of the way many of us live, but of our moment in history too.  They clutter the mental as well as the physical landscape ‘round our way’ and give certain clues to the lifestyle aspirations, survival techniques and cognitive dissonance of so many of my countrymen and women.

I currently have a small collection of these ‘Fridge’ pieces in production, with the wherewithal stacked in my back yard for it to become a larger collection.  But, as with any series, the first one to reach completion always feels like something of a breakthrough.  It answers various questions, both aesthetic and technical, and definitely points the way forward for those to follow.

I’ve lived with them over the summer, and spent much of time wondering how to work over what I always knew were essentially backgrounds (albeit fairly well resolved ones).  Part of my solution – that of incorporating printed representational imagery (derived from my original photography), clearly owes another massive debt to Rauschenberg.  The addition of screen-printed elements to work commenced in other media is something I toyed with a little last year, and certainly intend to pursue further in future work.

And, while we’re at it - I guess my continuing habit of inserting written texts into visual pieces also owes as least as much to the influence of Jasper Johns as to any other of the numerous artists who have deployed a similar strategy.  It’s pretty obvious that the recent/current major London retrospectives of those two closely allied Modern masters, cast a pretty long shadow over my current thinking.  The specific chosen phrase is an extract from my own extended piece, ‘Below the Line/Beneath Contempt’ – itself an absurdist compendium of contributions to the fevered debate immediately post the EU membership referendum, ‘found’ on various newspaper comment sections.  Indeed, that was the starting-point for this whole undertaking, and it still seems to preside over it, somewhat ludicrously.

The use of plastic fridge magnets to spell out the message is (I hope) a fairly neat little gag, as well as a novel new way of dealing with texts in my work.  I certainly like the added layer of 3D relief they supply, if nothing else.  They are, of course the kind of thing one might use to encourage literacy in young children.  Perhaps they might also allude to the key thematic A, B, C of my project – namely, Austerity, Brexit, and Consumption.  In the case of the latter, that might encapsulate consumption of: disposable lifestyles; of consumer (un)durables; the food they once contained (and which may now be delivered instead); or a population – preyed upon in accordance with the logic of late-stage Capitalism).  The betrayal of one generation’s future by another, and  the lack of political insight or historical awareness resulting from a society’s inability to adequately educate its population, might also be seen as subsidiary themes running through ‘This S(c)eptic Isle’.

Anyway, that’s enough potential 'meaning' for one relatively modest piece – isn’t it?  It’s certainly more than enough superfluous (and possibly self-defeating) over-explanation…