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Current exhibition
Richard Owen Moods for Moderns
Exhibition Dates: 18th October to 30th November
Preview 17th October 2008 6.30-9pm
Gallery Opening times: Friday – Sunday 12 – 6pm or by appointment
Richard Owen is an artist whose practice can be viewed as a series of commentaries, reactions and references to contemporary culture, the observed environment, fine art practice and art history. Working in painting, drawing and sculpture his work is developed from a studied appropriation of images, objects and ideas, that are re-imagined in new forms that compress time, styles, genres and media. While often referencing the past, his work is not nostalgic but uses visual quotations to ask questions about context, value and significance. Richard’s diverse approach to his practice is perhaps a means of combating the idea of an artist as producer of identifiable product, but it is this relationship between consumerism and culture that unifies his work.
Commerce quotes from art history without recourse to the original political, social and cultural meaning. Richard’s work aims to examine this de-signifying of the artwork by re-contextualizing it within a framework of contemporary discourse that examines the relationship of historical meaning and present contexts. In the appropriation of art in advertising, scholars suggest that art lends some of its cultural aura to the advertisement. A few qualitative studies suggest that not only does appropriation result in the advertisement gaining value, but it also results in the artwork losing some of its original aesthetic value. By referencing its own history and acknowledging its devaluation through appropriation and critique, the artwork allows itself to re-emerge with renewed cultural significance.
For Moods for Moderns at Another Roadside Attraction Gallery, Richard Owens work uses Modernism as the starting point for investigation. He uses the visual language of the 20th century ‘movement’ to produce a series of motifs, reliefs and semi-functional objects that examine our relationship to design, art and consumerism. Modernism, despite its regarded failure and super-session has become a part of our visual world. Its ideology may have gone but its aesthetic remains. By reinterpreting an instantly recognizable language Richard’s work playfully examines its influence on domestic affluence and on the modern consumer’s desire for informed luxury design and decoration.
Please contact Richard Adamson for further information or if you require images.
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Call for Video Submissions for October Screening
Approximately every eight weeks we organise an evening of artist video in The Griffin, Shoreditch, London. We are looking for submissions for our next event.
Submitting Work to Another Roadside Attraction
If you would like the opportunity to screen your work, then please send a copy on DVD to:
Another Roadside Attraction
55 Bayford Business Centre
Bayford Street
London
E8 3SF
Remember to keep copies of your original work as Another Roadside Attraction cannot be held responsible for work sent in.
If you would like the work returned to you after the event, please include a stamp addressed envelope when sending it to us.
Please contact us if you have any questions at
[email protected] or by phone at ( 44) 208 981 4312.
