I started creating the works for Voyeur Exhibition in mid-2015, and have spent the last 12 months working on the oil paintings, curating the lay-out and recording the digital aspects of the exhibition. The main body of works focuses on my personal relationships with four of my closest friends. The portraits in the exhibition are delivered in triptychs and each of the subjects is depicted using three different painting styles that adhere to the zeitgeists of art: the academic traditions, modernism and contemporaneity. These styles also allow the viewer to experience how I perceive each of my friends and their personality. Each of these styles of painting has preoccupied my art practice in order to master them, spending most of my life practicing and researching these techniques. I have used my relationships to help examine the nature of our contemporary experience and how we are interacting with our exterior world through our personal interior worlds and digital worlds.

 

The main body of work are accompanied by three works that express my influences as an artist, including works discussing Jan Van Eyck, Francis Bacon, and Andy Warhol. However, these are accompanied by the influences of world, most importantly our access to information though the internet, which has allowed me access to the influences of intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens (to name a few).

 

FURTHER INFORMATION

 

Voyeur contains 16 portraits, 2 projected digital videos and 1 audio recording. The portraits are displayed as triptychs and are accompanied by the digital archives of the private interaction between artist and subject. The Voyeur collection has been design and curated by Christopher R Inwood for the Jugglers Art Space with the intention to display Inwood’s vision developed in his art works that specifically corresponds with the gallery space. This curatorial practice leads the viewer to experience the relationship of Inwood’s subject, whilst allowing the viewer to connect with the artist influences to ground the viewer in the experience.

 

Rather than a psychological study of the subjects, Inwood’s work is a study of portraiture – specifically, the subjective relationship between the sitter and the artist. Portraiture is the image of the relationship between the subject's performance to the artist, the artist’s impression of the figure and the viewer's perception of this relationship. His Life is. 2013 collection opened out a voyeuristic relationship into portraiture, which is interpreted by the viewer, perceived by the artist and existing in the sitter.

 

Through his Voyeur* collection, Inwood examines personal relationships in an attempt to expose the fundamental reality of human experience, revealing the idealisation of third party voyeurism that is characteristic of contemporary western society. Voyeur provides a unique experience into the portraiture of digital realism. The exhibition is embodied through a collection that comprises visual and auditory digital mediums as well as Inwood’s distinguished oil paintings. Voyeur invites you to experience the personal reality of the artist’s interaction with the interior, exterior and digital worlds.

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*Voyeur: “a person who likes seeing and talking or writing about something that is considered to be private"