Julian Forrest
Artist's statement
My current body of work explores themes of loss of control and violence but often violence at a remove. Building on parallels I observed between sports imagery and war imagery (that informed my previous body of work), I began collecting images of young men engaging in violent behaviour in and around (but not restricted to) urban sporting events.
This in turn led to an interest in images of fire, oil, playground violence, airplane crashes, wild dogs and other symbolic examples of conflict and tension. These paintings often focus on two entities coming together, or pulling apart.
Stylistically I cannibalize imagery that I feel is either symbolic or emblematic and recycle these parts in subsequent reworked narratives. My paintings owe to the source material – the found photos pulled from the internet – however the source material is often altered or juxtaposed with other images in order to speak to the idea of memory, context, and storytelling. This body of work recounts a narrative of real violence re-imagined.
Julian Forrest's own web site
