Alex Baggaley – Recent Paintings
26th May - 1st July 2012
Alma Enterprises Gallery

For his third solo show at Alma Enterprises Gallery, Alex Baggaley presents nine oil paintings comprising of three visually and thematically distinct series. These paintings are a further development in the strategy of bringing together the potent elements, motifs and actions of his performative practice as a longer series of documentary paintings. 

As in his previous series ‘The Perpetual Set Up’, each painting takes as its origins the frozen frame of a video or a hastily composed still image of a recorded performance, event or situation. These paintings differ from the previous in that each set of three paintings presents a symbolic narrative with a set of recurring characters, props and a set of events that appear to happen in a sequence, i.e, a chronology, albeit a dysfunctional and untrustworthy one. Each performance, because that is, at their core, exactly what they are, is fraudulent. Without an audience and without an environment that defines the chronology of the action each ‘performance’ can be writ again and again. By being rewritten the composition can be polished. The residual becomes the intent. This residual can still be reworked even though never betraying its falsitude.

The two gallery spaces present 3 sets of 3 paintings. In the first gallery space are a group that depict a distinctively bewigged costumed figure, part clown/part dragoon, in different environments and states of dress; the settings are Berlin, Northumberland and the artist’s studio. The narrative is a delusional investigation of the Medusa myth; there is an uncertainty whether Baggaley is the monster or one of her victims. In the second gallery space a trio of paintings continue with the Medusa theme, this time taken from snatches of a rudimentary re-enactment & retelling of the Greek foundation myth taken from the viewpoint of Perseus. The final trio present a set of colours, forms, shapes and objects that seem to allude to disembodied elements of the previous paintings. In fact they are a depiction of a puppet show with Baggaley as the puppeteer manipulating the shapes without directly touching them. The video camera captures and the stills camera composes. The paintings conceal all this to present an abstract image; reducing all to colour, line and form. 

I HEART LYGIA CLARKI Heart Lygia Clark (And So Does Suely)

15/06: rencontre avec J. Lacey et S. Rolnik
15-29/06: exposition