THE PAINTINGS
click to enlarge
Angelus
acrylic, charcoal and vinyl on canvas 240 x 170 x 7 cm, 2008
Everybody Sees You’re Blown Apart
Acrylic, charcoal, chalk, vinyl and paintmarker on canvas 220 x 220 x 7cm, 2008
Take The Weight Away
Acrylic, charcoal, chalk, vinyl and paintmarker on canvas 220 x 220 x 7cm, 2008
Heaven Help Me For The Way I Am
Crucifix – acrylic, charcoal, household gloss and spray paint on canvas on acrylic and aluminum Tondi – acrylic on canvas, vinyl 150 x 100 x 300cm, 75 x 75 x 5cm variable, 2008
Ding Dong (Maggie’s Dead)
Ding Dong (detail)
Let Forever Be
Acrylic, charcoal, household gloss and electronics on canvas and aluminum 180 x 160 x 10cm 2008
Every Now And Then I Fall Apart
Diptych, acrylic, charcoal, vinyl and glitter 240 x 120 x 7 cm, 2008
THE EXHIBITION
Semple explores not only the multiplicity of meaning in the popular milieu but also the rapidly changing and diverse nature of the
mediums in which we consume cultural products. He has reproduced many seemingly mechanical reproductions by hand, utilizing
thousands of tiny black and white dots. The production is invariably epic; in ‘Heaven help me for the way I am’ the artist portrays in
minute detail across two tondi, a 3d crucifix and reflective oil slick an assassinated man, the DeLorean from Back to the Future and
an ominous female emerging from the shadows.
Semple works to capture the sense of catastrophe within the manufactured image and therefore the recording of mass culture
itself is highlighted across the series in his freezing of snap-shot moments, a pivotal point of crisis for the image itself, often
embellished with painterly emotive stokes. This body of work is an unsettling but exquisite invitation to ask questions about our
shared mythologies and our personal relationship with the colorful, fractured world we inhabit that is transforming with ever
paralyzing intensity.
“They all have this idea of a failed moment or the collapse of a particular situation. They occupy this place where the tragedy has happened, where
atomization and individualism have reached a peak and the individual is literally stranded. I think the key word for everything here might be
entropy.”
The breadth of Semple’s frame of reference is a constant adventure; the title for this series of works ‘Everlasting Nothing Less’
derives from a lyric in UK indie rock act Manic Street Preachers seminal anthem ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’. In Semple’s center piece
‘Angelus’, the motorbike in question is the black Ducatti from the iconic Puff Daddy music video ‘Missing You’ dedicated to the
memory of his dearly departed friend the Notorious B.I.G. Also in ‘Angelus’ we see the artist assume the poses from Millet’s original
work. To the artist this is the ultimate reproduced memetic image and profoundly emotionally resonant as he personally prayed
most days for the first 13 years of his life in front of it, regularly encountering the work in Catholic family members houses.
THE CATALOGUE
