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.
