John Squire
“Altering images using online editing software, Squire used distorted, fragmented sections of images which he then enlarged from the small screen onto giant canvases using traditional oil painting methods. “I took some photographs myself and crashed the editing software multiple times until I started finding images that I was excited by,” he says. “It wasn’t a process designed to make paintings, it was just something I had fun doing. Then I decided it might be something to explore in oil paint.”
The paintings, which take over two of the gallery’s huge back rooms, are almost trippy in the way the backgrounds merge with the human subject at the forefront – a result of Squire’s editing software experiments. Facial features are fragmented over the canvas on some pieces, while lost altogether on others, blurring into the surroundings. “I consume a lot of news and I can see parallels between what I was doing and with the way the news is framed and distorted before it gets to us,” he says on the work’s meaning.
“[Smartphones] are quite handy propaganda delivery systems, aren’t they?”
-The Face
“In the black-and-white photographs of Gilbert Garcin, a solitary figure navigates spare-yet-fantastical landscapes populated with towering sea-urchin shells, puppet strings, and oversized flowers. To create his images, Garcin crafts a tiny model world in his studio, which he artificially illuminates “to make more real” and then photographs. Working quickly, he spends two or three days…
“I’ve gotten more into fashion and politics and the way we can affect things. I feel like I’ve grown into what I was always thinking about but not really aware of. The whole reason that I’m a photographer, really, is to push optimism on people. I mean, I’m producing fashion photography. It shouldn’t be a…
“Marc Quinn expands the material and conceptual possibilities of sculpture. He emerged in the 1990s as part of the iconoclastic group of Young British Artists and is best known for his unusual, organic media: He’s made art from frozen flowers, slides of human DNA, and—in his self-portraits—his own frozen blood. Quinn has also embraced provocative subject…
Knowledge is power
Join our mailing list and as well as keeping you informed on all things Moonman, you can subscribe your calendar app to our art and fashion event diary.