Andy Parsons : About the Artist
The imagery in my recent work developed from the theme of Barricades. This work culminated in a show of prints at the Sudo Gallery in Tokyo and a large sculptural installation ' Barricades (or things that get in the way) ', at the APT Gallery in London in 2001.
The structures in ' Barricades ' evolved into the stick like configurations that became the theme for the show ' Sticks and Things ', at the Standpoint Gallery in London in 2002 and the work ' Calvary ' exhibited in the Jerwood Drawing Prize of 2001.
The stick like configurations had numerous connotations; Crucifixes, gallows, gibbets, scaffolds, signs, fences and barriers. The way these configurations were used in different contexts created surprising and sometimes unsettling images. These images were aimed at a reflexive desire to attribute figurative associations to abstract forms. The images were often simple but can be interpreted in a number of different ways.
My recent Artists book and print ' Trajans Column ' was based on parallels between Trajans campaign against the Dacians and the invasion of Iraq by the United States. I studied the copy in the Victoria and Albert and found it an extraordinarily rich source of ideas. I was intrigued by the idea that Rome developed an artistic and architectural language that corresponded to its colonial expansionism. Much of my recent work has taken as its starting point imagery from Renaissance and Baroque Art. This is a way for me to connect with grand narratives and a sense of ambition in scale and subject matter.
My work was/is partly an exploration of the enduring power of Christian Iconography in the interpretative process in Western art; why it is that if you paint a picture of some telegraph poles on a hill, it will always be seen as a depiction of ' Calvary '. I remain intrigued by the way that archetypal Christian imagery is embedded in visual culture and am trying to explore the possibility of finding ways to use the imagery in a secular, poetic and possibly polemical way.
Thinking behind the current work
The work I am currently making moves on from this position to re-engage with the figure. In my work of the last 7 years I have used other forms as proxies for the figure. I am now in a position where I want to explore a simpler approach that can be more direct in its communication with the audience. The new illustrations in the site give a flavour of the kind of work I want to create. The hooded figures that have emerged in my work are based on the idea of hoodies - a catch all term for young people that seems to have captured the newspapers imaginations.
I am interested in the idea of the hoodie looking similar to the Wayfarer in the work of German romantic Artist Caspar David Friedrich and to representations of saints, visionaries, monks and mystics from the history of western art from the renaissance onwards. The idea that the marginalized figure might be someone searching for something underpins the use of this iconography. In sculpture, prints and paintings in oil the hoodie figures have been in landscape settings, transposing them from their expected urban environment into the traditional realm of the visionary romantic poet or solitary monk.