shardcore

Venus (2010)

shardcore — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:40:34 +0000

Venus, the Roman Goddess of Love has been rendered by artists thousands of times over the centuries. Almost universally represented as a nude, suggesting that the notion of love is tied with the pleasures of the flesh. Venus is also used as an excuse to paint a beautiful naked woman (as if an excuse is needed). For the Christian painters of the early Renaissance, such images inevitably become bound to the moral strictures of the time.

This particular Venus is based on a painting by Cranach the Elder, who was himself a friend of Martin Luther (who’s moral outrage at the corrupt Catholic Church led to a new branch of Christianity).

The painting is made on a surface of 1980s comics, which may be considered morality tales in themselves. Comics provide simple stories of good versus evil, echoing the framework of the society they represent – Judeao/Christian moral landscape which in many ways remains unchanged since the Renaissance.

I have denied my Venus her beauty by replacing her head with a skull. A reminder that all of us are born condemned to die, that corporality is always hiding just beneath our skin. For those who believe in an ‘afterlife’, how we conduct ourselves inside our fleshy vessels impacts greatly on what happens after death.

I have placed the painting in a frame of my own construction, embedded with other signifiers of childhood moral gameplay; marbles, toy soldiers and cowboys & indians and other drossy ephemera.

Cranach painted many religious and mythological subjects throughout his career, which I intend to investigate through a series of paintings – of which this is the first – viewing the contemporary world through the moral lens of the 15th Century Master.

Beneath the void (2010)

shardcore — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 15:54:39 +0000

Thankfully, my general demeanour is relatively upbeat, however, like many others, I am subject to the occasional bout of depression. While every shred of my rational self tries to escape the crushing blanket of hopelessness, it’s no easy feat. It was during a recent episode that I was inspired to create this image.

For me, depression is the feeling of being at the depths of the ocean, beneath a mass of suffocating darkness. I imagined being entwined in the tentacles of a giant octopus, holding me below. And there I remain, until the beast relinquishes his hold, and I may rise back to the surface.

Acrylic on canvas, 762 x 508mm

the itch i can’t scratch

shardcore — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:53:27 +0000

if only you could see what i have seen

shardcore — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:17:29 +0000

The General and The Grunt

shardcore — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:35:05 +0000

I updated these two for Congregation 2010

“The Minotaur of Greek mythology was the result of the union of Pasiphae and a bull. He dwelt inside the labyrinth and devoured anyone who entered. Here the minotaur is presented as an Army General – you can draw your own conclusions.

I have painted this diptych in a deliberately cartoonish style to underline the sense of displacement between our perceptions of war delivered via the media, and the horror of reality.”

“This painting was first produced for MASS in 2008, and shown alongside The General as a response to the senseless, illegal wars being fought in our name.

It’s two years later, we have a hung parliament, we’re still at war – so much for the democratic process.”

Looking for the Light (2010)

shardcore — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:29:38 +0000

acrylic on canvas 762mm x 1062mm

For some people the very act of contemplation results in even greater uncertainty. Perhaps some truths simply cannot be found by inward reflection alone.

Future Self (2010)

shardcore — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:26:47 +0000

acrylic on canvas 762mm x 1062mm

Each of us will die, that much is certain. However, our feelings about what happens next are the subject of much debate.

As an atheist, I have no problem accepting the cessation of my consciousness and subsequent decay of my body into it’s constituent elements.

Yet, there’s something primeval about our response of seeing a skeleton – a deep-seated fear of mortality, a calling from the limbic system.

How one choses to rationalise that response perhaps tells us a great deal about questions of faith.

Pixellated Self (2010)

shardcore — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:22:17 +0000

Finally getting around to uploading my paintings for Congregation 2010. Here’s the first of two self portraits.

acrylic on canvas 762mm x 1062mm

Part of my reasoning behind assuming the pseudonym ’shardcore’ was provide a fresh identity, unfettered by past (mis)deeds. An identity solely concerned with artistic experimentation.

However, shardcore inhabits the same physical shell as my ‘other’ identity, and my face remains a visual conduit between the two realms.
This painting is an investigation into this conduit, recognisably me to those who know me, but opaque to those who don’t.

Democrashit – by Memepool

shardcore — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:26:53 +0000

We are in the final throws of a general election here in the UK, a clusterfuck of spin and lies that tends to leave me more disenfranchised than ever. Around the time of the last election, some friends and I got together to record some music inspired by this debacle. I decided to create a video for one of these pieces, democrashit. The lyric is not mine, it is written and performed by The Sheriff of Nothing.

“If this were a dictatorship it’d be a heck of a lot easier.
Just so long as I’m the dictator…”

Choose Tory, choose Liberal, choose Labour!
Choose you own fuckin’ jailor!
Democracy… you’re havin’ a laugh, innit?
They’re only in it to win it.
Can’t take another failure to acknowledge
What everybody already knows:
That’s the way it goes.
Everybody knows, that’s the way it goes….

Government by consent they tell me,
Well I don’t give mine.
Government by the mediocre pack, the grey,
the dead-from-the-neck-up party hacks.
Public schoolboys kissing arse.
Democracy, I wouldn’t wipe your arse with it.

Democracy…. Mediocracy…. A lawyer’s trick.
Every four years they choose their moment and offer you a little bite.
Then you get sentenced to Democracy of the Westminster kind.
No, not government by the tabloids or self-obsessed tv, Democracy!

Devoid of the honesty to admit that public opinion is the shit,
the lies they print between the tits and panty shots
and the lying banners of the red-rag tops. Democracy!

The first to go is freedom of speech.
I’m told I can’t complain or criticise
because I have defamed the memory of those who died.
Apparently granddad did his bit for this so-called Democrashit.

Yeah, right!

All those drafted Johnnies who didn’t go Over The Top
were consequently lined up and shot by their own side.
That’s how much your country loved your Dad,
I’ll not kiss your fucking flag!
Democracy, I wouldn’t wipe your arse with it.

And always you’re told to keep a hold of nurse
for fear of finding something worse.

Democracy, the so-called least-worse option.
An adman’s nightmare, can you imagine the pitch?
“The least-worse margarine”, man that’s a bitch!

Is that really the best we can ever get?
Accept what they call the best we’ve got?

And never try to better it except, of course,
through the gradualism of lying manifestos.
Small wonder that my cynicism grows
until I long for the day when nobody shows up for this sham anymore.

Choose Tory, choose Liberal, choose Labour!
Choose you own fuckin’ jailor!
Democracy… you’re havin’ a laugh, innit?
They’re only in it to win it.

So tick a box, or phone a friend, vote by mail
and indulge in the smug pretence that somehow it just might arrive.

Democracy, I wouldn’t wipe your arse with it.

Money, that’s what I want

shardcore — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:36:53 +0000

For those of us living in a capitalist society, there is an inexorable link between our lives, our perceived happiness, and the bits of paper we exchange for goods and services. A banknote has no inherent value, it is merely a reference to a sum, held in our names, by the issuing authority – in the UK, the bank of England.

There is an imbalance of opportunity inherent in cash, the rich have access to more of the world than the poor. Many people are obsessed with money, the ‘creation’ and acquisition of wealth in-and-of itself. This is, of course, an illusion – the actual value of money is a flexible agreement within a society mediated by the shifting tides of the economy. When that agreement of trust is compromised the ramifications can be substantial. Witness the recent crash in world markets, leaving this country, and many more, with unimaginably large debts, created in our name to prop up ‘the banking system’.

I started a campaign of subtly defacing currency about two years ago. Using a custom ink-stamp and UV ink, I have been tagging all the money that passes through my hands. To date, that’s now well into the thousands of pounds. The stamp itself is invisible, until illuminated under a blacklight – commonly used in this country to check for counterfeit notes.

This work is really about how we use these pieces of paper as markers of our passage through time. We spend to live, and live to spend. Each note we hand over gets us a little closer to death…