Human Disasters Highlighted

Ivan Smith, the noted British artist who is by now familiar to the Indian Audience through his ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’, a solo show at the Ashish Balram Nagpal Galleries, Mumbai, presents his latest print project at the VINEspace, London. The works in his own words.

Penny Black is a series of fifteen framed digital images, which were exhibited for one night only on Thursday 6th of September as part of the ‘A One Night Stand With…’ project developed by VINEspace on Vyner Street, London. A vibrant street in Bethnal Green, packed full of the young dynamic galleries in London making a name for themselves by showing emerging and exciting artists.  

Artist statement

This series of work emerges out of catastrophe, in this case Iraq.
Individual images have been taken from the Internet, at exactly the same size and resolution and without interference. This provides the basis of a visual dialogue that is open to manipulation and ranges free from its source. 

Duplicated en masse, and using a repeating pattern, the miniature
images create a field of colour that is derived from the detail. Then
when the eye is drawn to the single miniature images, a gateway into the macabre is opened and the relentless despair of human disaster is highlighted. 

Death and destruction surround us as we go about our daily existence. Does this dialogue mask and undermine the source or are we informed, galvanized and proactive? 

Ivan Smith © 2007