Seeing double
Ali Rahman
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Edmundson's America's Prodigy moves fast and doesn't take sides
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Grier Edmundson's painting exhibition The Work Ahead of Us holds a mirror up to its own images and to history itself
Oftentimes, representational painting culled from archival photography is perceived as a snapshot, a carefully selected moment that evokes and encapsulates a larger narrative, framed through the lens of the modern bricoleur. Grier Edmundson's exhibition The Work Ahead of Us seems to be drawing not from the centre of a narrative but from its periphery; the images don't necessarily tell a story as much as they suggest one."I guess the ambiguity in my work is purposeful," says Memphis, Tennessee-born Glasgow-transplant Edmundson. "As an artist you never want your work to be so obvious that it's only worth thinking about for a few seconds. I want the work to be flexible enough so that interpretation can change with time."
Edmundson's representational work displays a playful minimalism not unlike his more abstract work. In one image, a lovingly depicted black and white giraffe stands beneath scrawled text that reads "What will we think of next?" In America's Prodigy, we see side-by-side mirror images of a marathon runner rendered in oozing pastel-colours, muted yet clearly in motion.
"The doubling of the image plays several roles in my work at the moment that all tie in together," says Edmundson. "The most basic role is the formal role: Mirroring is slightly unsettling for the eye. Secondly, there are the narrative aspects: mirroring or repeating is a sort of metaphor for the idea of history repeating itself."
He explains further: "One of my main interests is re-examining ideas, moments
or people from history, how time has changed their perception and what happens to our interpretation when we combine elements from disparate points of history. Lastly, there are the conceptual implications. Many times my paintings are based on found photographs, so in making a painting I am already repeating an image... What does it mean to make a singular image in a world inundated with digital photographs? If I am going to paint one painting of this photo, why not two?"Grier Edmundson, The Work Ahead of Us
At Battat Contemporary (#100-7245 Alexandra), vernissage Nov. 5, 6 p.m., exhibition to Dec. 19
