Confused Histories
Artist Statement
Simon Attwooll C3 March 2011
Confused Histories is a painting show intended as an archive of the present but set in the future.
Images in the works are sourced from contemporary media. Collected ephemera such as found notes, bubble wrap and junk mail provide a base which documents contemporary attitudes rather than achievements.
The work is intended to act within a Gallery/Museum context as a tiny fraction of constructed history. This history has been deliberately tampered with referencing the mistrust, instability and confusion in contemporary society. The result is a chaotic platform from where the viewer must decipher what is real and what isn’t, what did or did not happen and what is a record of living or what has just been fabricated.
Talking about the present, using out-moded technology of the past such as painting and screenprinting, is a process which I can explore personal as well as shared anxieties about how our physical and social environments have changed and how these environments will continue to change in the future.
