Context 2000 - 2004
During the early 1990’s, I began employment in photographic studios ‘finishing’ hand printed photographs and the controlled manipulation of photographic imagery began to influence my own image making. Employed in London and later in Oxford, where visits to Richard Hamilton’s studio encouraged a new phase of personal creativity. Creative dialogues between the printed image and the hand made image prompted interest in the idea that the sill 2D image can be a deceitful conveyor of information. Motivated by paradoxical readings between the surface image and an implied reading of hidden content; these works accumulated in various series 2D paintings relating to hidden Internal Dialogues and the ‘Inner Voice’, representing subtleties and contradictions between public / private bodily self image.
Facades series
This Is Real
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Cliches
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Bad Things Happen Here
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Voices series
Voice 1
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Voice 2
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Voice 2
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A specifically female portrait image is used in the following series of paintings titled 'Voice'. Referring to a persons inner private voice (and its concealment) the series focuses on the representation of the mouth as an expressive and sensual image in a suspended introspective dialogue.
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The full adult image is concealed by the outline of a child. The child outline defines the adult image. The adult image fills the child outline.
The reading of introspection places the viewer as prier . This is heightened by the use of silver enamel as a highly reflective surface which creates a 'real' impossibility of viewing without the viewers own reflected shadow interfering with the reading. |
Muted Past 2
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Muted Past
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Outline Of Somebody in Someone Else's Space
outline of a person in someone else's space
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Cut out people and Wrong outlines
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MAP
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Internal Dialogues
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I wanted to find a visual poetry that could reflect the private internal dialogues that exist within all our minds. Focus on the face was the most direct way of dealing with this. If creative changes made to the image can alter the reading of its content - it then has to be possible to manipulate the outward appearance of an image with the actual intent of prompting a contradictory reading of content. The internal voice may not be a guide, but something to work against. The voice may not be a friend and may be a different age or gender. The portraits are intricately painted but often remain deliberately ambiguous in reference to age gender or expression. The titles of the paintings may be expected to provide a key to accessing content of the work, but the power of the title can equally be used to implant an idea that further stresses the surface reading of the image. I wanted to create a sense of the appearances undermining its own image. The thin layer of paint - the ghost in the image. 
YOUR VOICE IS NOT YOUR BODY
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THIS CAN ONLY END BADLY
WE READ YOU
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WE DO NOT NEED YOU
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I COPY YOU NOW
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this ENDs at Year 2004 - This is an archive site for the art of Andrew Litten