Helter Skelter
Paintings by Rachael Weitzman
Paintings by Rachael Weitzman
June 6th - 30th 2008
Private views took place on:
Tuesday June 10th 6.30 - 8.30 pm
Thursday June 12th 6.30 - 8.30pm
and
Sunday June 15th 12.00 - 3.00pm
when the gallery and garden were open for the Chelsea Festival
Viewing was by appointment at other times.
Figures run, trying to be the fastest.
Families picnic in the park.
Parachutes hang in the air above a ferris wheel.
These are scenes of people at play, some seeking the buzz of adrenaline, part of the fun.
The car suddenly drops on the roller coaster.
These paintings look at the human desire to flirt with death and our fascination with catastrophe.
Often thrill seeking is juxtaposed with a real, impending threat.
Each piece holds in stasis an unfolding event. Often the different speeds of the brush: slow, careful pointillism or sweeping gestural mark vie with each other and echo the struggle for containment within the painting.
Some paintings are ambiguous. Is the white paint drawn across the bare linen just light behind the figures or is it approaching smoke?
Sometimes a disaster is clearly happening. An explosion detonated on a busy street sets in motion a pyrotechnic display that completely engulfs the twinkling fairy lights.
The figures are at once present and absent. Often they are just a space of blank canvas. As silhouettes they each display individual characteristics while being part of the mass, a crowd of strangers.
Referencing contemporary graphic novels, pop art and nineteenth century Japanese print these paintings are also influenced by film. Film is, perhaps, the medium most concerned with disaster as spectacle.
The “Helter Skelter” group of paintings ask questions about how we deal with fear, how we process unprecedented events and how we view our fellow human beings in emergency.
Do we know what we'd do? Can we imagine what we'd see?
By exploring these questions the paintings seek to exorcise some of the demons that from the paranoia of contemporary, urban existence.
Rachael Weitzman May 2008
For further information contact Jonathan Ross: Phone 020 7370 2239 Or email