The Volunteers 2016

Curator: Joshua Flint’s 2016 oil painting, "The Volunteers," presents a disquieting scene within a landscape setting. Editor: Yes, there's a sort of melancholic pall across the whole composition, a somber quality that makes you pause. Is that a dead animal? Curator: It certainly appears to be a deer. The context, and how we understand its production, plays a significant role here. Consider Flint’s broader body of work, often focused on staged scenes hinting at ambiguous narratives. These staged elements suggest the artifice inherent in the narratives we construct about nature and power. Editor: Staged…like a theater production almost? I’m interested in how Flint seems to almost erase the faces, making them ghostly, immaterial, like the hunter's uniform might be more important than their identity. And why a vacant red armchair, a purely domestic manufactured item, placed out in the wild? The materiality suggests it might be mass produced, perhaps in a factory somewhere. Curator: The ambiguity is, I think, intentional. It opens up discussions about the relationship between humanity and the natural world, highlighting how these narratives can be constructed and consumed. And these sorts of images in turn serve roles in reinforcing social narratives and hierarchies. Editor: You are absolutely right. If we look closer, we see not just a hunter, but also two other figures that appear almost ghostly – particularly the female figure in white on the right. And the process of oil painting—the layering and glazing—really accentuates the haunting quality, while its presence, oil paint itself—that material is, well, made of the Earth. It grounds it too. What relationship do you think all these characters and materials have with the downed deer? Curator: The ghostly figures feel representative of some historical, unseen cost perhaps. I would say they’re acting as a visual disruption, challenging the traditional narrative of the hunter as solely triumphant or powerful. It also provokes contemplation about the values society projects onto such acts. Editor: Yes, the artist doesn’t offer easy answers but creates a compelling friction with material application, the composition and subject. A well done artifice indeed. Curator: Ultimately, this work is an invitation for the viewer to consider their own position within these constructed narratives and power dynamics. Editor: It’s unsettling. I can't shake the impression the land remembers and will reclaim everything in this constructed scene.