Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Bankley Studio Gallery, Greater Manchester 27 January – 11 February
Reviewed by: Sebastian Schlicher
In 'Tell the truth, shame the Devil', Amy Jones, Dean Melbourne and Laura Newey explore the connections between personal idiosyncrasies and socially constructed or imposed identities.
Dean Melbourne's works are a visual critique on the contemporary 'entertainment value' of issues such as sex, sexuality and gender. He mixes and mimics the glamour of glossy magazines with the vulgarity of Soho's blatant 'girls, girls, girls' aesthetic. His paintings are a clever take on the illustrative style that gives, say, cosmetic products a 'chic' and 'tasteful' appearance, and connects bland popular culture with a highly individual subject matter – transgenderism. Complex issues of sexuality are consciously and diabolically transformed into billboard images and reduced to a candy-coloured commodity: attractive, harmless, and vacuous.
Amy Jones creates portraits of the 'institutionalised and marginalised' – the homeless and the mentally ill. As it's usually society's most wealthy who have their portraits painted, Amy Jones' meticulously drawn, very bare pencil portraits suggest that these faces might very well be of the rich, undone of any reference to their social standing. Left with barely anything but a face – the character of a human being – the audience has to guess who these faces are, why they are put onto large canvases. Her plain, straightforward depiction eventually forces the viewer to consider the individual rather than their place in a social group.
Laura Newey links her work historically with Dutch and Spanish still-life painting through an apparent preoccupation with light and a specific choice of commonplace objects. From street scenes to a basket of blue-haired trolls, Newey extracts her imagery from a source 'close to home'. Her works speak of a love for painting that unconditionally includes all objects and themes of her surroundings. Even if her chosen images might be considered 'dubious' in terms of taste. Newey manages to ridicule the cult of good taste, not by celebrating its equally cultivated opposites, but by being daringly sincere about what she does. Her involvement with the formal and traditional aspects of the medium speaks clearly, loudly, and with an old fashioned honesty.
All together 'Tell the truth, shame the Devil' emphasises the vulnerability of emotional depth, and the difficulty of individuality against the powerful pressure of social convention.
Writer detail:
SEBASTIAN SCHLICHER
is an artist and writer.
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