Jack W. Holden   ‘After The Flood’

paintings - video - sculptures - photographs

Oct 23 - Nov 27   2010

opening: Oct 23, 17-19 h

The title of Jack Holden’s second solo exhibition, ‘After the flood' at Mart House Gallery refers to the flood of images in our day-to-day lives from advertising, television, newspapers and magazines.

These images are usually coded and have unconscious messages that are designed to touch on the desires and fears of the consumer. Jack Holden’s new works are a response to this overload of emotive advertising imagery. He would describe the new series as a meditation on the rise of one idea that has come to dominate Western society - the belief that the satisfaction of individual feelings and desires is our highest priority.

After buying a contemporary porn magazine picked at random, Holden gave himself the task of producing a new series of works inspired only by what was inside. From this project a variety of works in different mediums emerged, including digital c-print photographs, silkscreen prints, paintings, video and ceramic sculptures.

During creating these works Holden had two main questions in his mind: Does Porn succeed in mirroring our inner desires and ideas of divine beauty or does it mirror our collective loneliness? Is there an intended coded message in Pornography, in the same way that there is in advertising images?