Richard Bartle

Oil
Series of paintings.

Oil is a series of eight paintings which draws imagery from the process of drilling, pumping, refining, trading, dealing and consuming that drives oil dependent capitalist economies. The works combine painting and collage, making use of images from diverse media sources including a live web cam feed from a research station in the Antarctic and marketing materials for one of the world's largest oil producers.

The series references found geographical illustrations depicting oil deposits in the strata of the earth. The artist was struck by how the lack of human presence in the images rendered them interesting from a scientific and an aesthetic perspective yet left the context through which we relate to oil at a remove; unseen as a relationship that drives the economy.

Bartle's ‘Oil Paintings’ are not intended as a solely political gestures; they also gesture towards a visual inquiry into painting and the nature and materiality of of the medium, conscious of the varied influence of oil within art practice.