February. The Fear
mixed media on canvas
H 87cm x W 112cm
March. Beautiful Way
mixed media on canvas
H 87cm x W 112cm
April. Headache mixed media on canvas
H 87cm x W 112cm
May. Trouble In Mind mixed media on canvas
H 87cm x W 112cm
June. The Lady Don't Mind mixed media on canvas
H 87cm x W 112cm
July. Grace Kelly Blues mixed media on canvas
H 87cm x W 112cm
August. Bang On mixed media on canvas
H 87cm x W 112cm
September. Save Me mixed media on canvas
H 87cm x W 112cm
October. Asleep And Dreaming mixed media on canvas
H 87cm x W 112cm
November. Come Into My Sleep
mixed media on canvas
H 87cm x W 112cm
December. Beginning To See The Light mixed media on canvas
H 87cm x W 112cm
Essay By Aden Rolfe.
Any two objects placed in an appropriate space develop a connection. They influence each other, talk amongst themselves, tell a story. ‘The World At Large’ explores the relationship between image and narrative, between the personal and the general, the real and the fictional. The twelve diptychs – corresponding to the twelve months of a year – depict a variety of characters and creatures alongside everyday objects and abstract elements. Taking their cues from world events, song lyrics and the artist’s life, the works are fragmentary and suggestive, leaving the viewer to unravel the oblique meanings that might be found there.
For ‘The World At Large’ Price has created a series of strange and humorous scenes that place the representational alongside the conceptual. Faces, animals and shapes are made strong and dark against flat beige backgrounds. Figures are out-of-proportion and in distorted perspectives. Each panel is rendered by pencil, oilstick, paint and collage, and is essentially a drawing on a canvas. The result is a fragmented world that seems to extend beyond the frame: a realm of select objects, a textured limbo. In the negative space the elements breathe. They develop relationships both tacit and overt, provoking questions and advancing the plot.
The energy in Price’s work is created by juxtaposition: from individual elements interacting within the frame; from each panel speaking to its pair; and from the works talking across the sequence. The eye is drawn around the canvas to follow the entangled hair of its subjects, the moth emerging from a character’s stomach, the apocalyptic gaze of a magpie. By the lines connecting various parts of a work a story starts to unfold, but it’s a story that’s neither fixed nor explained. Instead it expands as the images recur elsewhere, popping up in different works where they relate to different characters and different objects. The narrative is open-ended and conversational, part of an incomplete whole.
‘The World At Large’ playfully interprets the human condition, measuring the months while rendering chaos into tight images - making sense and non-sense from the flow of daily information. It reconfigures the public and the personal into a world at once meaningful and absurd, unreal and yet strikingly familiar. It’s a world that asks you to follow the lines and join the dots, to read your own story into the sequence. A world where meaning is made in collaboration with the viewer, and the interplay of narrative and image invites your interpretation to round out the tale.
