John Moores 25
This exhibition is being held at the Walker Art Gallery, 20 September 2008 - 9 January 2009
Oil and human hair on board, 60.5 x 50.2 cm, 2007
The characters bare witness to the humanity found in extreme situations, while
the painting indicates inhuman and barbaric practices, like butchery and torture.
Characters have included soldiers and martyrs, types that are typically male,
where the displacement and corruption of power occurs. They are fetishes of
the grotesque that mark their territory by p***ing on themselves and everyone
around them.
I want the paintings to be read as human, however feeble or malevolent. The
characters are both victim and villain, and self-portrait and fiction.
Grant Foster was born in Sussex in 1982. He studied painting at the University of Brighton 2001-2004, winning the Burt, Brill & Cardens Award for Outstanding Artistic Excellence 2004. He attended The Prince's Drawing School London 2004-06, gaining the Drawing Year Bursary Award 2006. He was awarded the Winsor and Newton Art Prize 2006. Group shows featuring his work include 'Bride of the Atom' Studio A Gallery London 2004, 'Pathos to Ethos' Eleven London and 'George Polke Invites' George Polke Gallery London, both 2006, 'Big Wow' Oslo House London 2007 and 'Dead Bodies and Cardboard' Elevator Gallery London 2008.