Andrew Johnson
email: acjohson35@btinternet.com
tel: 0208 994 5884
Central to my practice is the depiction of warfare, the imagery drawn mainly from media cuttings and from films. Much of this imagery also maps out a world of simulation and death without moral judgement. The ‘Helicopter Series’ 2009, is a body of work drawn from a long helicopter sequence in Ridley Scott’s film ‘Black Hawk Down’ ( 2001), based on a factual incident where a US relief force went into Mogadishu, to rescue fellow Americans held by Somali insurgents in 1993 . The images display the power of spectacle and can best be described by the the words of the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard; ‘we all know the images before we see them’. They belong to a genre of war spectaculars which serve to blur the perception of what is reality.
Why do I choose to paint war images which are suspect in the first place and by the process of painting become even more suspect? I choose to paint them for that very reason. I am further distancing the image from reality.
The paintings in the show represent a journey, starting with ‘Surveillance’ when the target is pinpointed, through ‘Incursion’ 1-7, and finally ‘Down’ when the ill-fated adventure begins to unravel.
In my practice I am trying to organize the events I depict in space and time. I am drawing my images from a motion movie, and I see the helicopter sequence there as a performance space and the sequential images I am painting as dynamic events for which there can be no closure. I am organizing events in time in the same way that governments and the media organize military spectacle. To quote Hal Foster,‘a history first scripted, then translated into pseudo-historical simulations to be consumed’.
www.andrewjohnsononline.com
tel: 0208 994 5884
Central to my practice is the depiction of warfare, the imagery drawn mainly from media cuttings and from films. Much of this imagery also maps out a world of simulation and death without moral judgement. The ‘Helicopter Series’ 2009, is a body of work drawn from a long helicopter sequence in Ridley Scott’s film ‘Black Hawk Down’ ( 2001), based on a factual incident where a US relief force went into Mogadishu, to rescue fellow Americans held by Somali insurgents in 1993 . The images display the power of spectacle and can best be described by the the words of the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard; ‘we all know the images before we see them’. They belong to a genre of war spectaculars which serve to blur the perception of what is reality.
Why do I choose to paint war images which are suspect in the first place and by the process of painting become even more suspect? I choose to paint them for that very reason. I am further distancing the image from reality.
The paintings in the show represent a journey, starting with ‘Surveillance’ when the target is pinpointed, through ‘Incursion’ 1-7, and finally ‘Down’ when the ill-fated adventure begins to unravel.
In my practice I am trying to organize the events I depict in space and time. I am drawing my images from a motion movie, and I see the helicopter sequence there as a performance space and the sequential images I am painting as dynamic events for which there can be no closure. I am organizing events in time in the same way that governments and the media organize military spectacle. To quote Hal Foster,‘a history first scripted, then translated into pseudo-historical simulations to be consumed’.
www.andrewjohnsononline.com
‘Surveillance’ (2009)
Oil on canvas. 146 x 100 cms.
‘Down’ (2009)
Oil on canvas, 146 x 100 cms.
‘Incursion 3, (2009)
Oil on canvas, 28 x 20 cms.