Fading Fast, 2006

Fading Fast
MCAC, Portadown, September – November, 2006

The Second Gordon Bennett Memorial Show & Shine
Modified Car Event, MCAC, Portadown, October, 2006

Excerpt from the stealth press release (an additional or alternative press statement that was mixed with the official gallery release photocopies in the gallery).

At the core of this exhibition are challenges to masculinity, identity, and perceptions of history. This is articulated through a base concept of ‘blending-in’ – a term that comes from a ‘stealth’ industry that seeks to modify or camouflage technology. This term can also be seen as a way of articulating the hidden layers in the works that refer to homosexuality. The artist subtly weaves many narratives together which present aspects of gay identity both as superficial and deeply embedded in various cultural situations. For example the large mural print of two soldiers initially looks like to men embracing, possibly taken from a gay marriage or gay activist context. As the label text reveals it is an image of two soldiers celebrating the acquittal of manslaughter charges related to the drowning of a 15-year-old Iraqi boy.

The exhibition combined blending-in works with recent pieces from a residency in Serbia. The car event subsequently led to the development of a fragrance which recorded the smell memory of the day.