The Artist's Eye: Barnaby Barford on 'Me Want Now'

The recent bodies of my work have included examining the 'Seven Deadly Sins' in contemporary society and exploring the multi-faceted, often polarising retail world of our capital city through the much acclaimed 'Tower of Babel' at the V&A last year. My new body of work 'Me Want Now' is an installation featuring a queue of life-size animals surrounded by large scale abstract Word Drawings.

A continuation of my exploration of our society, I wanted to focus on the notion that we live in a place where success is measured only in terms of growth. The idea that our satisfaction and happiness is only achievable by doing more, earning more, having more or producing more.

Over the course of making this work, the political landscape has shifted drastically, and the title, 'Me Want Now' has developed new meaning as a result. I began to see how quickly political rhetoric can promote fear and in turn a closed border ‘me first’ attitude can develop For me, this exhibition became about looking at the collateral damage that ensues when this rhetoric takes a hold.

Each Word Drawing features a single handwritten word repeated over and over and over again to form an abstract image. I have used words such as More, Hope, Glory, Power, Growth, Choice, and Change. These are the emotions that have often driven humankind to achieve great things, words that are inherently positive. Through the process of drawing, the words become warped, as they often do when used by our politicians, in the newspapers or on social media. It is the egocentric pursuit of these bastions dominating the current climate which has driven this body of work.

The Word Drawings act like dominant, influential voices that surround the centrepiece, a queue of life-size animals. The animals consist of thousands of individual ceramic elements, each hand decorated with small sections of the Word Drawings.

The animals become human as they wait in line, seemingly powerful creatures such as the 2.5-metre Polar Bear, the Panther and the Tiger stand alongside the baby Elephant, the Roe Deer, the Fawn and the Rabbit. The queue, one reminiscent of the ration queue, the dole queue or just a queue to get in, forms outside a separate room featuring trophy heads mounted on mirrored plaques, suggesting the future of the waiting animals. I think we have sadly developed empathy fatigue for other human beings and by using the animals, I hope to evoke a different, more compassionate reaction.

As with all my work, I hope the exhibition opens up a wider debate, not just about these ideas but broader topics surrounding our ME WANT NOW culture, where a disregard of consequences seems to be eroding our collective sense of humanity.

ME WANT NOW

David Gill Gallery

18 November - 15 December 2016

www.davidgillgallery.com

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