Completed Mixed Media Piece: 'Fridge 6'

'Fridge 6', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen-Print, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish & Magnetic
Plastic Letters on Salvaged Refrigerator Door, 65 cm X 50 cm, 2018

Here’s the sixth of my fridge door-based multi-media pieces.  At first glance, ‘Fridge 6’ looks reasonably of-a-piece with the preceding five - and in many ways it is.  It certainly follows the familiar recipe of acrylics, paper collage, and screen-printed elements - compiled onto a salvaged refrigerator door, and bearing a textual component picked out in magnetic plastic letters [1.].  As ever, the latter is an excerpt from my written piece, 'Below The Line / Beneath Contempt' [2.].

However, there is a slight adaptation of procedure here, in that the printed elements are integrated far more into the collaged ground – rather than being applied over the top, as previously.  This was a deliberate, attempt to avoid everything just following too predictable an A to B to C formula.

Whenever I do another print run, I tend to roughly proof onto disposable newsprint paper – creating, in the process, a stack of lower-grade versions of the final images.  These are what were collaged into this piece - in the full knowledge that they will inevitable yellow and darken with age.  It’s obviously a slightly risky approach, but an element of progressive degradation and built-in obsolescence actually feels pretty appropriate, given the general tenor of this particular body of work.  It has occurred to me, more than once, that ‘embracing the decay’ might actually be one of my own mental survival techniques, in both my art - and in life generally.  I’ll definitely be keeping half an eye on any creeping changes in this one, over the coming months.

Anyway, the role of the main figure is taken here by a symbolic representation of a cardboard box - which itself marks the introduction to the 'Fridge' series, of another of the key motifs appertaining to my 'This S(c)eptic Isle' project, as a whole.  By coincidence (or perhaps not at all), I've also entered the more sculptural, cardboard box-based phase of the 'TSI' project.  More of that in future posts.

[1.]:  Comic Aside:  As the magnets alone aren't strong enough to rely on - I've been affixing the plastic letters to these pieces with Superglue. Whilst doing this one with bare feet, late one night, I failed to notice the puddle of adhesive which had dropped onto the floor.  Cue - a moment of growing panic as it appeared I may have glued myself down - followed by several more minutes of very tentative peeling.

[2.]:  Despite the simplicity and directness of this particular phrase, I relish the different interpretations it might actually imply, through varying the inflection.  "Who cares what YOU think?"; "WHO CARES what you think?"; "Who cares WHAT you think?"; "WHO cares what you think?".