Woolley good art.
Apologies for my tabloid strap line. I couldn’t resist.
The David Risley gallery is tucked neatly away on Vyner Street, which has become a little hub of gallery activity since a ‘rash’ of galleries popped up there from the mid naughties onwards. And I swear it is gathering speed. If you want to open a trendy gallery space you could do worse than the Vyner Street area these days.
Charlie Woolley is a relatively young artist who now lectures at the London MET. He likes to play around with the on-screen image, text and typeface and technology. His work is an exploration into the world of photographic possibilities, by extending the way the image/text reaches us. In the series of photographs and film stills in this exhibition, pixellated explosions and half-illegible images are bluntly pasted together in hazy and manipulated formats, with imaginative results.
In his series of housing photographs, which make up part of this exhibition, he uses bits of low-resolution images, which are blown up so we are left with mainly the pixellated pattern and little of the actual picture. These are cut into building shaped silhouettes and pasted onto random landscape backgrounds, creating a mixed media touch.
And a sort of eerie effect.
It is like the house used to be in the picture and it has now been removed. A negative space. Something reminiscent of Racheal Whiteread’s work perhaps?
What is so effective in these works is this sort of half reality, which is created by the bizarre juxtaposition of photo-on-top-of-photo.
The houses are mid–way from disappearing before our eyes like Doctor Who’s Tardis or a ”Beam me up Scotty” special effect from a 70s TV show.
And what’s more I think they would go perfectly in my minimalist kitchen I am going to get. Which will contain only contemporary art. And a dishwasher.
His other series of images, frankly labelled ‘War-porn’, have the stamp of a pop art mutation with some heavy subject matter thrown in. The most mass-produced product is the television right? Through it we are probed with images of war and sex. Here Woolley distorts film stills with these themes and also explores the colours and patterns you can create from the trippy effects that taking a photo of a film screen can create. A sort of recycled image if you like.
The manipulated, dog-eaten, amateur feel, gives these photos their beauty.
Also by Woolley in this exhibition, showing that he is not all serious subjects and insightful messages, is “ Home of the Blues”, which is a nice pun as it is an electric guitar-and also - shed. Yes that’s right a shed which is also an electric guitar. As you do.
I know all those rocking gardeners will want one. Shall I let Alan Titchmarsh know? Perhaps not.
go see: http://www.davidrisleygallery.com/
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