Dimensions: support: 1220 x 813 x 26 mm frame: 1238 x 831 x 32 mm
Copyright: © Rita Donagh | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Rita Donagh's work, "Bandsman", presents an interesting case in how materials and process inform meaning. Editor: It's ghostly, isn't it? Like a fading memory etched onto the canvas. Curator: Indeed. Donagh often explored how news imagery is mediated. Consider the labor invested in rendering such an ephemeral image with such precision. Editor: It's a figure collapsing, almost pixelated, referencing images of the Troubles, right? The band, a symbol of community, disintegrating. Curator: Precisely. Donagh is challenging the spectacle by focusing on the quiet labor, the act of making visible, the very real weight of social unrest. Editor: So the seeming lightness is deceptive. It's not just a pretty picture. It’s about the social weight it carries. Curator: Exactly. The artwork really prompts us to consider the processes by which information, and therefore history, is constructed. Editor: It makes you think about the role of the artist in giving visibility to forgotten histories.
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Bandsman 1988 is a large landscape-oriented canvas dominated by a graphite drawing of the upper half of a male figure, who lies face-down with his head positioned in the left of the composition. The figure is depicted in a pixelated manner composed of a series of fine markings and dots, and the body appears to be floating in an undetermined white space. Although his facial features are not clearly defined, the man’s head is drawn in greater detail than his body, and with heavier markings. The rest of the man’s figure consists of a faint outline of his back and left arm, which hangs down almost to the bottom of the composition, and the left hand, like the head, is drawn with greater definition. Along the lower edge of the work is a thin horizontal band of airbrushed blue paint that gradually fades as it moves upwards, dissolving completely into white just before it comes level with the figure’s hand.
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