RYAN MOSLEY: Census Event

Exhibition 07/03/08 - 30/04/08

The fourteen new paintings that make up the exhibition, while varied in terms of size and subject matter, can be seen as a single, coherent body of work. They operate as a visual ensemble, leading the viewer from the safety and comfort of the gallery into a strange world of carnivalesque characters that we do not immediately recognize or understand. The painted faces and plump, fleshy limbs, the costumes, masks and props, challenge us to make sense of what it is we are looking at. Our imaginations are put to work to sort through the rich lexicon of colours, signs and symbols, to make associations and establish some sense of order within it all.
The exhibition’s title Census refers to that exhaustive study conducted periodically by a government of its people in which members of the public are assigned to various pre-determined constituencies according to race, religion, wealth or wherewithal. It encourages a certain reading of the works. Almost without realising it, we find ourselves thrust into a position of authority and obliged to pass judgement on the status and identity of those unlikely individuals that look down at us from the walls. Among the questions of hierachy, class and profession, certain familiarities begin to emerge. We make out the tousled epaulette of a soldier, the Sunday robes of a clergyman and a pair of star-crossed lovers. The succession of smaller, single portraits suggests some sort of past ancestral lineage, a thought echoed in the appearance of skulls, traditional reminders of our mortality, nestled within the psychological cornucopia of the larger works.