Andrew Maughan: Hypernormal
Those who tell the stories, rule the world - George Monbiot
Larkin Durey is delighted to present an exhibition of new work by Andrew Maughan; his third solo show with the gallery.
Since graduating from the Royal Academy Schools in 2022, Maughan has crafted a body of work that skewers the most pressing issues of our times.
In Hypernormal Maughan interrogates the power structures that manipulate and divide global society, in particular the rise of neoliberalism: an ideology promoting free markets, deregulation and individualism. The results: environmental crisis, escalating economic inequality, the erosion of public infrastructure and community and growing authoritarianism are documented in paintings whose source material is the billionaire owned media. Like the screens through which our news and opinions are filtered, these works appear to tell us everything at once. And yet, the language of painting alters that lens, slowing our attention enough for us to question just what it is that we are looking at.
In Jeff, Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos sits alone on a hired rollercoaster. The painting is stripped of detail or defining features; the carriage dominating the picture plane. This is both a man of power and a grotesque child with the freedom to treat the world as his toy. Similarly, manosphere influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, both of whom are charged with multiple rapes and trafficking, are painted as children, a disquieting choice that upends their carefully constructed public image.
Facing both is a portrait of Rachel Corrie, the American nonviolent activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer while she tried to block the demolition of a Palestinian home. Taken from a video of Corrie speaking at the Press Conference on World Hunger when she was ten years old, the painting stands in stark contrast to the portrait of the Tate brothers and the choices they went on to make.
Echoing these stories of violence, power and erasure is a portrait of a Saint Helena olive tree. Following centuries of colonial rule and agricultural farming on the island, the tree was declared extinct in 2004.
Each painting is a flashpoint from crises around the world, some so ubiquitous they become anonymous – wildfires, masked commuters during the COVID pandemic, drones dropping bombs – others pinpointing specific events such as the 9/11 attacks or activists protesting the genocide in Gaza. These are paintings whose mark making speaks of the flattened shapes of the screen and our transition from citizens to consumers. And yet, by choosing these images as the basis for his work, Maughan suggests that the power of painting in times of image and crisis saturation, is to reactivate the senses, to disrupt the narrative that there is no alternative and to create new stories.
Maughan was born in 1987 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK and is currently based in London. Exhibitions include 'CAVE', Liverpool Biennial, UK, 'Riff/t, BALTIC39, Newcastle, UK, 'North', IKON Gallery, Birmingham, UK and the RA Schools Show, Royal Academy of Arts, UK.
