After the last few projects I feel the need to move on from what I was doing, I felt I was just upcycling stuff found and discarded. I am drawn back to figurative painting. I have a number of small 8×8 canvas’s some of which are left over from the Iconography project and indeed some are covered in gold leaf and ground.
I am also drawn to the idea of creating a series of identical sized paintings to be displayed as one resolved work similar to works by Ellen Gallagher. I have enough canvas’s currently to make a series of 12. One theme could be figurative scenes of people either at work in a labour intensive environment or people without work. I am interested in worker exploitation and menial low paid factory labour or farm labour. Rows of faceless factory workers being a small cog in a large factory machine, unseen as individuals and de-humanised, their efforts and toil profit the factory owner and the consumer not the people involved in the manufacture.
This is juxtaposed with an unemployed person who wants to work and be inclusive but is for one reason or another excluded from the work environment. This then follows on to very unfortunate people who are homeless and excluded from society itself. These are obviously large scale issues and a vary large subject to cover so I do need to narrow my field down and be more specific. A term which tries to convey this idea is ‘Solitary Participation’.
I am also interested in a number of different series, maybe one about female labour another about poverty or the homeless, disadvantaged people in society. possible focusing on a specific gender or age group as the umbrella subject is massive.
The small scale of the canvas’s also has a photographic scale, a simple click of a camera compared to the labour of completing a painting.
I am excited to see how it develops.
Michael Palmer 