Art Metropole

#05194

Out There, Not Us

Artist

Clunie Reid

Date

2009

Publisher

Focal Point Gallery

Format

Artists' Books

Details

Softcover

Size

25 × 30.5 × 1 cm

Length

0 

Description

“Are you French? Do you like Paris Hilton? Do you speak Hilton? Do you dance in Hilton’s space? Who have you looked at? What have you seen of Hilton? What have you touched? Has Paris touched you? Have you touched something of hers? What Paris is touching you? Do you torch her fire? Are you part of the Hilton family? Are the Hiltons part of your family? What life are you leading? What life is leading you? Whom do you lead astray? Do you go forward? Where do you go with time? Are you going forward? Is it better not going forward? What are you fed? What are you talking about? Who leads you on? What is your fate? Are you all satisfied with your fate? Is your life before you? Is your wife behind you? Do you live your wife? Are you jangling in June? Do you like to be caressed? Who cares for your back? Whose back do you make car tracks on? How do you track your back? When did you last see your back? Who are you from behind? Are you behind yourself? Is that really her?”

Paul Buck: not italics no title

Buck goes on to suggest that, in one sense, Reid’s work isn’t doctrinaire — she simply wants to stimulate our thoughts, to enable us to read certain words against certain images, and for us to flow from one to another. If her images and installations draw from popular magazines such as Hello, OK!, Grazia and Heat, her intention might be to ‘un-sell or disconnect us from the products and the notions of our society.’ Her collages and assemblages can be seen to act as ‘a rupture of adverts and promotions and their purpose, a rupture of images. They are intent on challenging us to see everything anew. She wants us to face up to the aggressivity and sexuality of our world of images. She wants the media itself to reflect on the images they use… perhaps even to question their integrity. Or perhaps she wants to tell us that the media has ethics.

The essay is inserted over 4 pages of 32 full-color photographic reproductions of Reid’s collages.

Clunie Reid was born in Pembury in 1971. The artist lives and works in London, and is represented by MOT international, London.

Recent exhibitions include ‘PEEK A DE BOOM’ Galerie Reinhard Hauff, Stuttgart, 2009, ‘Life as You Like it’, MOT international, London, and ‘Nought to Sixty’, ICA, London 2008.

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