17 March - 24 April 2005
Kevin Francis Gray’s new body of work takes aspects of Greek mythology with a semi-deliquent, underclass of youth culture, fusing them into an empathetic hybrid of philosophical parables and social, psychological duplicity. He takes his cue from an inner city terrain, and takes as his subject the juvenile gang engaged in low level criminality and antisocial behaviour; the stereotypical white trash underachiever; the ‘hoodie’. Gray’s approach to his subject matter however is a quasi-heroic and romantic take on the notion of the outsider and the fugitive - finding a stylised code where society, as a whole, has located a misfit.
In truth Gray is not so much concerned with the plight of a politicised social species, even though they’ve stepped straight out of a Larry Clark ‘Kids’ movie. For Gray it is more an opportunity to exploit the interface between the figuration of his chosen forms and the duality of the imagery that it depicts. The confluence of opposites is always marked in the work and usually by a type of sophistry. Incongruous but poetic motifs are always prevalent, and in ‘Bow Roses’ and ‘Leyton Lillies’ - two light boxes with perforated linear images on black, gloss, opaque paper - they come as East End floral tributes. In other works the hood is used as a monastic reference.
In two large bleached-out photographs the story of Icaraus and Daedalus is played out around the scene of a joyriding accident. In one, the presence of a paternal figure can be seen overlooking the actions of a group of miscreant youths. In the other, Icarus has crashed to earth, but from behind the steering wheel of a stolen car not from the skies.
The central floor sculpture, ‘5 Soldiers of E9’, is a hexagonal plinth with five hooded figures arranged in a circle on top. In the centre is an illuminated crystal, dispersing fragmented light across the group. The light from the crystal is used in its Biblical sense and as a counter point, but also as an expedient tool, to juxtapose the dark, apocalyptic underside of the five figures. The black, vinyl, floral ivy that entwines the plinth references a kind of Arcadian view of the Classical world.
5 Soldiers
Leyton Lillies