"What is the mind of any onlooker doing? Searching for something recognisable? Prepared and preconditioned by our shared culture we might be expecting something general or commonplace, such as a human figure, a landscape or objects constructing a narrative as a way into the work."
The second episode in our Enchantment season features artist Grant Foster whose solo show, Home to My Teenage Bedroom has just opened at the Phoenix Art Space in Brighton (and runs until 13 April 2025).
Grant's cultural artefact is a 'strange fossil' which he found on a beach while on holiday in the Quantocks in the west of England. We talk about animals, time, Philip Guston, Mike Kelley, Mike Nelson, Caravaggio and much more.
Grant Foster in conversation with gallery curator Matt Burrows and Dr Chantal Powell, a South-West based artist, educator and curator, whose work is informed by a PhD in psychology and an ongoing study of Jungian theory.
Grant Foster selects 'The Atrocity Exhibition' by J G Ballard, first published by Jonathan Cape UK, 1970. Both artist and writer embrace in equal measure the freedom, fear and disappointment that results from the individual being a fragmented composition, vulnerable to manipulation and capable of dynamic reconfiguration...
"I first encountered Grant Foster's work in 2008, in the John Moores 25 painting prize exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. I was happily haunted by the gnarly, tragi-comic, skeletal, uniformed, character depicted in his painting Hero Worship (2007). I was especially delighted that Grant looked and sounded exactly like the artist that was meant to paint it..."
Where are the images in the works generated from?
In the past I've worked from images in newspapers, then I collaged or adapted the image in some way. In other periods I've only worked from my own drawings, with many revisions, till I came to a piece that felt right...
After spending three months at the British School at Rome at the end of last year, Grant Foster returns to London in top form, presenting a solo show at Tintype Gallery (on until 3rd June 2017)..
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