We Have No Bananas
16 - 30 Jun 2012
WE HAVE NO BANANAS
16 - 30 June 2012
Jack McConville’s practice, though derived from art historical references, often commences from diverse sources (from popular culture to scientific articles) culled from the online sphere. For his last solo show the body of work took inspiration from You'll Never Spa in this Town Again, a book by Robert Randolph that reveals the closeted gay subculture of Hollywood stars centered around an LA spa. This setting of the spa, and the vulnerable borders between the public and private which it transgresses, was referenced back to the art historical theme of the odalisque. This marriage of contemporary source and traditional form sought to examine notions of permanence and identity within an anonymous culture and the dislocation of the distinguishable narratives of visual language.
For Intermedia, a new body of paintings will take their point of departure from a scientific article published by the New Yorker entitled We Have No Bananas. This explores the fate of the Cavendish Banana plant, (representing 99% of the banana export market), which is threatened with devastation from a bacterium called Tropical Race Four.
The use of genetic engineering to produce a resistant strain of the Cavendish plant will be used as an analogy to the shifting nature of the formal and theoretical models of art objects. The paintings created for the show will combine elements of defunct modernism as a pastiche on the search for resistant organisms and the quest for the perfect ideal; the perfect banana. Their placement within the white, cleansed space of the gallery will be juxtaposed against the sterile environment of the research laboratory, where hybrid banana plants await dissection, decipherment and judgement from an external participant.
16 - 30 June 2012
Jack McConville’s practice, though derived from art historical references, often commences from diverse sources (from popular culture to scientific articles) culled from the online sphere. For his last solo show the body of work took inspiration from You'll Never Spa in this Town Again, a book by Robert Randolph that reveals the closeted gay subculture of Hollywood stars centered around an LA spa. This setting of the spa, and the vulnerable borders between the public and private which it transgresses, was referenced back to the art historical theme of the odalisque. This marriage of contemporary source and traditional form sought to examine notions of permanence and identity within an anonymous culture and the dislocation of the distinguishable narratives of visual language.
For Intermedia, a new body of paintings will take their point of departure from a scientific article published by the New Yorker entitled We Have No Bananas. This explores the fate of the Cavendish Banana plant, (representing 99% of the banana export market), which is threatened with devastation from a bacterium called Tropical Race Four.
The use of genetic engineering to produce a resistant strain of the Cavendish plant will be used as an analogy to the shifting nature of the formal and theoretical models of art objects. The paintings created for the show will combine elements of defunct modernism as a pastiche on the search for resistant organisms and the quest for the perfect ideal; the perfect banana. Their placement within the white, cleansed space of the gallery will be juxtaposed against the sterile environment of the research laboratory, where hybrid banana plants await dissection, decipherment and judgement from an external participant.