 |
The Great White Way Goes Black
2011
Vilma Gold, London
Installation view
Julia Wachtel is fascinated with the visual language of mass culture.
Her paintings enter into a visual language game wherein the appropriated
vernacular of mass culture is illustrated, simulated, replicated, altered
and parodied. The logic of this language is disturbed just enough to provoke
a meditation upon the conditions of meaning intrinsic to that vernacular.
In her paintings of the 80s and 90s, Wachtel inserted grotesque, irritating
cartoon characters — popular with the middle class in the 1960s and 1970s
when they were seen on greeting cards, bar supplies and T-shirts – into the
“readymade” lexicon of mainstream magazine and newspaper photographic images
which documented the contemporary socio-political landscape of the time.
Within more recent work cartoons still feature, alongside other figures from
a wider source and all imagery is now culled from the internet. In her new
work, every painting includes a focal panel that explicates various notions
of the representational ‘everyman’, whether through working class cartoons,
or another form. Company logos, sales advertisements and the ubiquitous
‘Google Map’ image are just some of the recognisable referents that filter
into Watchel’s transnational fables. |
 |
Landscape
No. 11 (government)
1990
oil, flashe, lacquer ink on canvas
48" x 148" |
|
Landscape
No. 13 (backyard)
1990
oil, flashe, lacquer ink on canvas
60" x 110.5" |
 |
Procession
1989
Oil, flashe, lacquer, ink on canvas
57" x 165" |
 |
Landscape
No. 7 (?)
oil, flashe, lacquer ink on canvas
60" x 102 " |
 |
Another Year at the Mall
1993
acrylic and screen ink
60.3 x 180.3 cm |
 |
bp
2010
oil on canvas
36 x 84" |
 |
Self-respect
1993
oil, acrylic, and screen ink on canvas
84.5 x 40.25" 215cm x 102cm |
|
