Hamish Wright - 'Soyouz Pop'
Canaday Gallery, 25th February–15th March 2009
"Ukraine, Russia and Eastern Europe have always been areas that have fascinated me, from a very young age. One can not help but be struck by the role of the visual art in Soviet society. It seemed to me that the artist's role was often perfunctory, servicing the state by creating posters, propaganda, public mosaics & so on. What had been their private psychology during this process as they used their skills to communicate with (and educate) the masses?
I know that many artists in Ukraine today distance themselves with this past and try fervently to create a new reality. I am often amused and amazed by the creative past lives many artists have once had, and how they have distanced themselves from it in order to move on. They created the many curios - a mixture of commemorative badges, cartoon characters, and safety warnings for matchboxes - all of which contain a fascinating popular culture snapshot of the times they were in. Sanctioned and commissioned by the state, they were the little things that made up people's everyday lives, going unnoticed and ignored.
Using techniques both familiar and new to me, I decided to recreate these objects on a large scale. My hope was that the works would impact on the viewer, disclosing what I felt was the significant aesthetic of these nondescript objects in hight-art context." - Hamish Wright