Blank Media Collective

Upcoming Event: [Recommends] The Drowning World: Dan Davis, Michelle McKeown, Terry Shave

Saturday 28 August 2010 - Saturday 2 October 2010

AirSpace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent

In 1962 J. G. Ballard wrote the book The Drowned World, wherein he explored a particular post-apocalyptical scenario and ideas of chaos brought on by the consequences of solar radiation and melting icecaps. Nature takes over, once again, and the world returns to a more primitive state of existence. The protagonist eventually embraces this new natural order but wrestles with the devolutionary position he finds himself in, this sharply contrasts with the determination to retain power and control by other characters. The actions of others eventually persuade the protagonist to find unity with a more organic landscape. After all, you don’t know tranquillity without knowing chaos.

The Drowning World, explores some of this subject matter in relation to contemporary and historical concerns, alongside the layering and transformational processes within the production of art. The artists shown here produce unnerving images, which discuss the dislocation of people related to place, history and society. The notion of strata is key to all of the artists, whether that be historical, physical (in terms of the layering of an image) or social. All of the artists are showing new work in this exhibition.

Terry Shave is intrigued by, and experiments with, the material qualities and subtleties of paint. Recent concerns involve inspections of place. Place as a negotiation of who we are and how we are perceived. Those liminal moments where we are all on the threshold of moving to another place; sensory thresholds that are at a point of intellectual and visual negotiation with ourselves. The triptychs offer options. Shave’s paintings play tricks on the viewer, implicating them in the narrative and actions inferred.

Michelle McKeown’s work seeks to use portraits of Queens by Velazquez and del Mazo to explore ideas of the Dionysian, Dionysius being the god of fertility, libido and ritual madness. These symbols of political power are subverted and brutalised to become totems of rapture, reckless abandon and the irrational. Using the Rorschach inkblot experiments of the natural philosopher Justinus Kerner as a device to primtivise, the fluid qualities of the paint also begin to reference the visualisation of the science of chaos. They are a unification of ancient ideas with our modern concept of the fingerprint of nature.

Dan Davis is perhaps the most directly influenced by Ballard’s writings; exploring double, or hidden, meanings within which there are contradictory qualities. Davis explores allegorical narratives to develop encounters that are often deceiving, requiring repeated viewings to unlock the references (symbolic or otherwise). In On and On we see an isolated figure sitting at an almost entirely mirrored desk, in what is suggestive of an office so high up within the corporate landscape that it sits amongst the clouds, above its domain. The work often places the audience in what could be described as a state of limbo, in stasis before scenes of alienation, order and the rationally sinister.

There is a strong sense of unrest present in all the work in the exhibition, of the world unravelling beneath our feet. The status of the individual, and in particular the decadent or corrupted, is investigated and criticised in both McKeown’s and Davis’ work. It is revealed and made visible. This is also explored in Shave’s work: the decadent use of paint, and the painterly surface, hiding, glamorising or valorising the image. What is impressive, despite this rather disturbing scenario, is that we are confronted with such a visual feast and the optimism of enquiry.

To coincide with this exhibition, a catalogue will be launched alongside a talk with all three of the artists on Saturday the 18th of September 2010. For more information and to book your place for the talk, please contact the gallery.

All Welcome