Hardback, black and white illustrations, 112 pages, 270 x 295mm
20% off this catalogue during January
This
catalogue accompanies Perry Roberts’ first solo exhibition in the UK since his departure from this country to take
up residence in Belgium
in the mid-1990s. It consists entirely of new work, commissioned by Ikon, made
in response to architecture in Birmingham,
characteristically encouraging us to look again at things we think we know.
Since his emergence as an artist, from Goldsmiths College,
London in the
late 1980s, Roberts has remained remarkably true to an aesthetic proposition
that arises out of the problematic ideals of modernism. On this occasion
Roberts has made a number of video pieces focused on the exterior walls of
large buildings, dating from the 1960s and 70s, identifiable in the
agglomeration of Birmingham’s city centre: a hotel, a library, a signal box and
so on.
The formal qualities, the configurations of lines and shapes on these
skins stretched over supporting internal structures are eloquent, very telling
through their modernist references. The grids, the pre-fab repetitions, the
“abstract” vernaculars - these all suggest a kind of certainty supposed to come
with science and mathematics. Furthermore, they share a visual vocabulary that
is the inspiration for the style Roberts adopts, the style that he takes and
reinserts into a loose-knit, global conversation about art and the way it fits
into everyday life.