I’ve had the use of a large empty building for a couple of weeks where I’ve been working on a major new piece of work titled ‘The anti-Fashionistas’. This will take the form of a series of 6 metres long banners for Village Green arts Festival. I’ve been reworking a 30 metres roll canvas I had left from a previous project which was covered in children’s drawings. I prepared the canvas by priming areas to obscure, but not delete, the existing drawings. My drawings have then responded to the traces and remains of the original drawings which has activated the picture plane, breaking up space and introduced random mark-making by way of interventions into my ‘slick’ singular line drawings.The children’s expressive mark-making incorporated into my own, takes my drawing into new creative territory.
I’ve been using fine quality liquid acrylic and drawing with brushes to produce a strong permanent line. The images are of female forms, many taken directly from my sketchbooks of English National Ballet dancers, others appropriated from various cultures and historical (and pre-historical) contexts that form my personal archive. The images are bold and direct, to be visible in the crowded public space of the festival site, displayed on security fencing.
As the title suggests, the work functions as a critique of the fashion industry; the absurdities of fashion, the excesses of the fashion media that objectifies us all, the prevalence of celebrity culture with all its insidious effects of self-loathing and discontent that corporatism feeds off…
