Sanderson Contemporary Art’s exhibition BOUNCY reinterprets ideas influenced by both Pop Art and Modernism while using iconography or materials drawn from the here-and-now.
The title of the show is pointedly over-the-top – a cheerful word conveying the shine and slickness of a bright rubber ball; a throw-away term, implying both unruliness and the unknown.
BOUNCY is a show about putting ideas out there and getting a myriad of possible responses back. The term “bouncy” also implies the injection and release of energy and tension, and consequently, impact. This concept can be extrapolated to embrace the making, viewing and response to art.
The phrase ‘pop art’ was first used in 1958 and referred to the world of advertising and commercial art and graphics, prior to this the word ‘pop’ had appeared in a poster by Richard Hamilton in 1956. When Pop Art emerges as a distinctive genre in the early 1960s it was controversial not least because it embraced many concepts from the world of commercial art (then considered a ‘low art’ form) such as shop signs , newspapers, cartoons and poster art.
The featured artists have responded and interpreted the concept of ‘pop art’ in a distinctly individual manner. Materials range from fabricated light boxes to sculpture, Perspex paintings and printmaking, while the combination of themes and styles are equally broad.
Dave Beazley makes use of a cartoon aesthetic in Under the Thumb with slick bright colours and quirky characters to address, in a bleak humorous way, the controversial and topical issue of whaling. Mark Ussher takes a very different approach, using imagery sourced directly from the Pop Art era to engage with contemporary aesthetics and values.
Shintaro Nakahara’s Edo has a distinct textual element in his calligraphic references with a ‘pop art’ polish. Gill Gatfield’s work Blood Work uses thousands of commercial pins to form a rich surface of changing spatial effects.
BOUNCY focuses on work by 12 emerging artists: Shintaro Nakahara, PJ Paterson, Dave Beazley, Michael Hawkins, Matt Moriarty, Andrew Barns-Graham, Mark Ussher, Gill Gatfield, Holly Mackinven, Jessica Pearless, Gina Jones, Clinton Phillips and Frank Wakerbarth.
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