28/08/2009 PREVIEW: BOO RITSON AT POPPY SEBIRE AND ALAN CRISTEA, 13/10/09
Super Special Update - Nomadic gallery Poppy Sebire have announced the location: it is [drumroll]...
36 North Audley Street, London W1K 6ZJ
The more you know.
It seems a bit greedy to me to take over two whole galleries with your new show, but that’s exactly what tickety Boo Ritson seems to be doing. This October, she’s set to storm ‘nomadic’ London gallery Poppy Sebire, which takes a different space in the capital every month, as well as the well-known contemporary space at the Alan Cristea Gallery. Simultaneously. Girl done good.
Scenes of small-town America will come to life in Ritson’s show Back-Roads Journeys, which begins in the aforementioned Alan Cristea. There, you’ll find an installation recreating a highway diner, where screen prints on plexiglass and still lifes of fast food will conjure up the unhappy Diner Waitress and the hungry Trucker. From the images I’ve seen, the work looks stereotypically jaunty and a little scary (check out the Diner Waitress’s uncanny smile if you don’t believe me). Ritson’s taken photographs of real burgers that she’s painted all over; then she’s made prints of it. (It’s just a shame she had to ruin the burgers though, isn’t it.)
The second part of the show, at Poppy Sebire, sees the scene shift to the ‘Gas Station’. Here we find that the Diner Waitress of half an hour and a few miles ago has quit her crappy job, moved to the warm South and become best buds with the Trucker, joining him on the road. New characters are thrown into the mix, and it all begins to feel a bit Beat Generation. Hell, I feel so nostalgic I might get my Kerouac out.
Ritson depicts these characters in photographs of her own paintings, setting up odd little histories for her own artworks in the process. She borrows images from the massive and wonderfully familiar catalogue of Americana, combining it with her own special brand of imagined narrative. Amongst all of this, we’re also promised some ‘unfinished’ subjects, so there’s plenty of scope for our own overactive imaginations to fill in the blanks in her storytelling.
Opening 13th October at Alan Cristea (31&34 Cork Street, London) and Poppy Sebire (of mysteriously as-yet undisclosed location), I think it’s going to be story time for all. Keep an eye on our website to find out where the elusive Poppy Sebire will be based.
-- Ellie Rose
Image Credit:
Boo Ritson, Chips, The Trucker, 2009
Archival digital print on Somerset paper
Courtesy the artist, Alan Cristea Gallery and Poppy Sebire |
