Glenn Ibbitson - Lower Gallery

Smoke and Mirrors
Monday 29 August - Wednesday 21 September 2005

Glenn Ibbitson

The human figure is the central theme of my artwork; not the idealised, sanitised, celebrity model, but the body with its myriad imperfections, asymmetry and irregularities; subject to the inexorable processes of ageing. To expand the scope of this long term preoccupation, these paintings occupy the milieu of the Circus and comprise:

1 The 'Human Curiosities'
These are depicted as sideshow tableaux and celebrate the variation from the average (or currently fashionable ideal) of human physiology, which is threatened in a society with the technological capability to implement (un)natural selection, and

2 'Performers':
tumblers, magicians and their assistants. Ordinary looking people perform extraordinary stunts; physical and temporal skill is contrasted with sleight of hand; the individual act of brilliance (trick-shot archery) with the illusion achieved through collusion and teamwork (the Human Bridge and the Levitating lady).

This is not a series of paintings depicting the polish of a finalised performance under lights; it dwells with the protagonists at the rehearsal stage; their work in progress. The figures are not yet in their costumes and practise sessions take place in woodland clearings or against theatre backdrops which have not yet been pulled taut.

I have employed my experience of visual trickery as a scenic artist in the film and television industry to investigate the nature of trompe-l'oeil effects and (mis)representation. Familiar cinematic techniques (back-projection, cut-outs, glass-shots, prosthetics) are alluded to here to inform these pieces with a sense of visual discord; producing images which in one way or another defy accepted notions of sense of gravity, scale and physiology. The audience's perception and preconceptions are exploited by a visual subterfuge to blur the line between the genuine and the fraudulent, reality and illusion.

Also showing at Mwldan Upper Gallery - Rosie Simpson- Paintings

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Oriel Mwldan Patron Mary Lloyd Jones