Carboretum

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‘We Love’. Falkeandcharlotte at Ellen de Bruijn Gallery, Amsterdam.
This exhibition opens in Amsterdam on the 14th April 2007, where I will be showing with the Dutch artist Dora Timmers. The show will be accompanied by a publication which represents the summation of the exhibition series related to this project. Each artist works in tandem with a writer producing a critical interaction and response to/and in relation to the work. This recent period has been crucial to my current development in that the ‘discourse’ described earlier has now become one that is not solely located within painting process but has now developed to investigate the tensions between ‘image making’ and ‘objects’. At the beginning of his interview, Steve McNeilly described this tension in needing to see these ‘objects’ as ‘something other than paintings’ (4). The whole discussion then centered on the complex narratives of post-enlightenment thinking around notions of the museum, collecting and categorization and the unique place that objects can have in activating that discourse.

The works are a set of painted gesso panels with brass inlays entitled ‘Carboretum’ and an accompanying separate powder coated brass panel, ‘Quercus’ (Latin for oak). I am increasingly interested in exploring the possibilities provided by materials which have both an art-historical reference point (for instance the work of the 17th century German painter Adam Elsheimer painting on copper and brass) and a modern functional appearance, (trophies, name plates, remembrance plaques, plaques.) Material can suggest conflicts of meaning, materials providing their own narratives both outside the realm of mainstream art and within it, setting up the possibilities for ‘discourse’ between discreet story-lines.

My current works are exploring the contradictions of ecological ‘green’ language on the one hand and our tacit support for an increasingly powerful car culture on the other. This is not to say that this about being a ‘green’ artist .The panels simply explore the curious relationship of specific trees (these also have their own plaques) sponsored by the petrochemical giant, Esso. Such apparent contradictions open up a whole swathe of investigations which lead very quickly to exciting and unforeseen meanings.

(4) See ‘Carboretum. a collection of ten works’. Edward Chell in Conversation with Steve McNeilly.

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