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16/10/2008

Richard Owen

Another Roadside Attraction Gallery, London

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 consumer¹s desire for informed luxury design and decoration.

Preview 17th October 6.30 ­9pm

Another Roadside Attraction Gallery
Bayford Street - London
Open Friday to Sunday 12 ­ 6 pm
Free admission

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