Love and Fuck – are part of a whole series of postcard and playing card collage that David has been working on for years. These are heavy homages to artists work that he likes. Re-makes. Visits to work which then change because of the nature of the postcard/collage process. The result is a new work, not copied but heavily inspired by the originals and taken through to another, different stage.
David has made many of these over the years, exploring art history and rediscovering the works of art that inspire him. The Love and Fuck in this catalogue are made against playing cards. The Love and Fuck in the actual show are set against Christmas cards. David loves these cards and the way all of that extra glitter and messaging and cheer comes through. Love and Fuck seem particularly poignant against them and he can see a longer relationship developing out of Robert Indiana’s original in the future. He says, ‘You might see not just Love and Fuck, but Cunt and Shit and so on! We’ll have to see how it develops.’
IAN IRVINE
Most of my work involves using images, phrases, and appropriated aspects of popular culture to make (mostly) prints and paintings which draw on traditions from inside the canon of 20th century art, but also ‘encompass’ many other areas of interest – my upbringing in working-class Liverpool, an obsessive interest in and knowledge of Pop Music, Cinema, Design & Typography, Social History, Visual Iconography and a very large dose of Humour.
I am constantly trying to make work which may encompass the myriad of influences which I find swimming around in my head. Successful art is often a marriage of the medium and the idea, which is why I have proposed a screen-print called ‘Coloured People’. This is a good example of a work which encompasses many of the aspects I have been mentioning (music, films, politics,) and finds a visual equivalent of that idea in a medium which does it justice. The second piece is called ‘Walk away Rene’ and is inspired by the work of Rene Magritte, in the sense that it presents us with words and images which do not belong together, creating a sense of puzzlement in the viewer.
Pete Marsh
Pete began painting and printmaking again in September 2009 following the discovery that an old friend and artist, Garry, had died. Feeling compelled to produce his own work again for the first time in nearly twenty years, Pete is exhibiting and selling once again.Pete attempts to produce, not just a facsimile of what he sees, but something that expresses what he and (hopefully) his audience feels.He feels his work is perceptual rather than conceptual, emotional rather than intellectual and he prefers expression over realism, subtlety over sensationalism, substance over novelty and intuition over reason.Pete’s work is held in private collections in the U.K., Canada and Australia.
Siobhain Moakes
Siobhain’s current work concerns the adaptation of the visual field of the viewer to the received image. She has had many difficulties with her eyesight over the last few years and this has stimulated an interest in conveying distortions, both in image and focus.
She usually works in oil on canvas and enjoys figurative work, although the direction of the latest work has led to an interest in painting a pseudo – landscape, derived from images from Google earth. There is a pleasing irony in the apparent aerial image appearing as if it were complete fact, when it is actually a generated distortion of fact and fiction.
The work for the exhibition is a series of large scale canvases, mounted as connecting panels. These are meant to be seen ‘in – the – round’, that is, entered as an installation piece. This should create a feeling of oppression and force the viewer to move to see the panels, thereby introducing a kinetic element to the work.
Ed Pien is a Canadian artist based in Toronto. He has been drawing for nearly 30 years. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, he immigrated to Canada with his family at the age of eleven. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from York University in Toronto and Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario.
Ed Pien has exhibited nationally and internationally including the Drawing Centre, New York; La Biennale de Montreal 2000 and 2002; W139, Amsterdam; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Middlesbrough Art Gallery, the UK; Centro Nacional e las Artes, Mexico City; The Contemporary Art Museum in Monterrey, Mexico; the Goethe Institute, Berlin; Bluecoat, Liverpool; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; as well as the National Art Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
As an art instructor, Ed Pien has taught at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and the Ontario College of Art and Design.
He currently teaches part-time at the University of Toronto. Pien is represented by Birch Libralato in Toronto, Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain in Montreal and Galerie Maurits van de Laar in The Hague.