Charlie Barlow
Peterborough
Artist
Charlie's practice begins through a haptic relationship with ‘boundary objects’ – everyday commodities that signify system, order and containment – and grows by exaggerating these items to a point where they both retain and go beyond their original form. Animated creatures and disorientating landscapes made from inert readymades such as latex gloves, toilet rolls and bin bags playfully shift basic definition and meaning into a messy, mystical space with multiple metaphors. Emphasised material qualities – colour, texture, shape, scent, movement, time – create a disruptive experience highlighting camouflaged societal power structures which impact sense of self and problematic notions of 'the Other'. With no respect for norms, these beings infiltrate public space and soil sanitary galleries, confusing the categories of sculpture, performance, painting and rubbish. Unsettled status, perplexed value and blurred artificiality prompt consumerist questioning and environmental implications. Elements of works are produced in the studio as composition is realised during installation - a change in environment acts as a point of discovery for both the materiality of things in space and associative significance, flexible to shift with location. Destruction is an inevitable aspect of the work, displacing the function of such objects as commodities in order to form tangible transitory experiences.
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