Superstition
John Firth-Smith - Bruce Armstrong - Rodney Glick - John Beard
10 Nov - 4 Dec 2010
Superstition
For a list of works please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Superstitions are credulous notions, not based on reason or knowledge. The word conjures images of bones, animals, religious fervour, totems and rituals to protect the individual from all manner of future calamities. It also suggests a hang over from the pre-enlightened era whereby only through unquestionable observance to pagan gods the curious or disastrous were levelled at evil and mischievous forces.
The exhibition draws its title from John Firth-Smith’s major painting Superstition 1993 that inspires the viewer to question the exact nature of this totemic work. Sitting atop a spiralling field of blues, a bone floats, operating like a shortened horizon. John Beard’s painting Sheep 2007 depicts what appears to be a facsimile of the head of a sheep. Leering out from the darkness the disarticulated head acts as both benign protector and as villain. Bruce Armstrong’s sculpture Sarcophagus 2008 explores the fascination with ancient rituals surrounding death and the lure with the ancient pagan past. Painted onto the exterior are two connected heads, each occupying different opposing worlds. And for the first time John Buckley Gallery is presenting the work of sculptor Rodney Glick who’s work Everybody No.35 2009 depicts a white middle-class man with Shiva-like arms sitting astride a golden horned Hindu bull. This sculptural clash of cultures conflates the idolatry of the east with the violence and danger of the west.
Today in our western world we are bred on a heady mix of mass marketed fear campaigns prompting us to consume, act and believe - Superstition is rife and perhaps more relevant than ever. Artists have been responding to these ideas for centuries and this exhibition of work by Bruce Armstrong, John Beard, John Firth-Smith and Rodney Glick, is an eclectic and intriguing show of ritual, religion and spirituality.