Royal Academy Entry ‘Manufactured’

Posted by: bobbywashere on: October 24, 2008

In: Paintings
Comment!

Maunfactured, Acrylic on Canvas (2008)

Ok if you reaction is similar to my family, friends, work colleagues and the framers then you are probably thinking what the hell is going on here…Let’s just say my Gran (95) was not impressed with this painting

I better proceed and explain the journey and how I arrived at this painting me thinks!

Towards the start of the year I decided I would enter this years ‘Summer Exhibition’ at the Royal Academy in London. This is an annual international competition which is open to professional, amateur and practically anybody who wishes to submit a piece of work (at a cost of £25 per creation mind! Least I’m contributing to this countries art collection I guess). Each year in January the Academy releases a word or subject matter which artists can choose to submit work based around. There are various rules, frames, labels, transportation and so on but essentially a panel of judges select from over 11,000 entries which work is to be hung in the gallery that summer. This year’s word was ‘Man Made’.

Large Version

: Maunfactured – Zoom, Acrylic on Canvas (2008)

As always I intend to describe my personal journey for each observation and in this case better explain why we have some naked skin suits here! Time to dive deeper (warning!).

You will notice from previous post on this blog I have this annoying habit of flickering in between the physical (actual) world I record and the one I interpret from. To expand on this I believe its part of my remit as a visual observer to document the under currents or the subtle movements we may or may not be aware of, or in fact heading towards.

As we all float down the ‘river of life’ (apologies for the cheese here) we are all very busy and occupied just keeping afloat, avoiding obstacles even just navigating round the unexpected bends to notice what is really happening beneath us. In keeping with this admittedly pretentious analogy theme I like to look beneath the surface and observe what I see and it tends to mean the tempo is a little faster or to translate this gibberish predict the shape of things to come further down the path.

Manufactured sketch, biro on paper (2008)

What’s this got to do with the skin suits I hear you all screaming now, well I have a personal fascination with the human image throughout our art heritage and human history documentation. This influence has leaded, in particular, for me to visualise our intervention (Man Made) in our species evolution and to magnify the consequences of these actions for others to peek into.

I do accept this painting is not to every bodies taste and by the way it did not get selected for the Royal Academies Summer Exhibition, surprisingly. But I have merely painted what I saw and it was not intended to be provocative as some spectators have commented on, although I except it can come across this way.

Manufactured sketch zoom, (2008)

I think it’s safe to say it won’t be hanging on my Grans wall anytime in the near future but keeping true to my own personal philosophy I observe then record what and how I see it. I would of coarse be interested to hear your thoughts on this admittedly bizarre creation and what your take on it is as a spectator.

Large Version

P.S. Did you notice I removed the hair from the final painting, it just didn’t look right