Biography
Paintings between 2013/16.
Statement by Vincent Lavell
In the age of the digital all images lose their presence as objects. The sheer multiplicity or availability of these digital files flattens the distinction between cartoon characters and Caravaggio. Making a painting that features or references these images retains some of the physical heft of the original and makes it available to be worked on by the artist. Surface, colour, scale and composition are 'present' for the viewer.
In the work of Frank Moore some of these images collide and grapple with each other in an arena strewn with the debris of art history and modernism. In the 'topsy turvy' world Franks crazy cartoon characters play and bounce around iconic images from the history of art. Van Gogh's bedroom is turned over and Degas or Seurat is given a slap.
Are these attempts to revivify these icons or are we witnessing the triumph of the banal over the significant? It seems space in which these images appear is the natural home of the two dimensional cartoon characters. They set the pace as they move around the ghost images from history. They have the vital spring and animation of irrepressible corporate characters or are they lords of misrule? Or maybe they inhabit or find themselves in a world that is beyond their understanding, beyond their expectation and so hysterical with excitement they are delirious with a dionysian energy with an unfocussed potential waiting to become form. In this way they recollect John Berger's description of Disney characters.
'What they do is to demonstrate how alienation may provoke a longing for its absolute form - which is mindlessness'
Berger ( 1980 ) About Looking
Statement for New Painting
My practice is determined by the human tendency towards mindless behaviour. Through memories of personal experiences the work transmits the social disease relative to mob mentality which prevails in today's society. The civilised world is always prone to rupture the claustrophobic, chaotic scenes that I depict seem reminiscent of this.
Often, the work confronts issues regarding migration and global conflict
The human condition has remained a continual influence in Moore's research, the critique of which is a key part of his working process.
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