Part Series

“Even when a collection transforms itself into a discourse addressed to others, it continues to be first and foremost a discourse addressed to oneself.  Serial motivation is discernible everywhere….What we really collect is ourselves”. – Baudrillard “The System of Objects”

The representation of the body and a viewer’s reception remain loaded – we approach paintings of flesh in a prescribed way.  We expect gesture, form and composition to allow us to position ourselves to those depicted, perhaps in terms of social hierarchy or some sort of narrative, or to reveal personality. 

The Part Series intends to thwart our attempts at reading the painted body in any prescribed way.  A heavily cropped composition and entangling of limbs prevents labelling of parts.

Cropping becomes a function of the artist’s determination and aesthetic decision and does not imply a mutilation or destruction of the body; cropped parts do not lend themselves to fetishistic consumption. The flesh is idealised and seems to glow with life. There is a refusal of traditional narrative and conventional psychological connection.

The Part Series aims to draw the viewer in, yet repel in equal measure. We are conditioned as voyeur to seek a narrative.  Here none is revealed, therefore we cannot position ourselves to the subject.  The large scale suggests intimacy, yet heightens a viewer’s uneasiness as voyeur, as intimacy without narrative seems thrust upon the viewer. 

The Part series contains a number of such large-scale paintings, a ‘collection’ of flesh.  But this is flesh which does not allow the viewer the fantasy of possession; its parts cannot become sequestered object. – Bunch 2009

Part One, Two and Three in ‘Transition’ Oxo Tower London: