Carnival for the dead at Viktor Wynd
The contradiction of art is that the most bright, colourful and joyous work may have the darkest meaning.
In a vibrant, colourful and anarchic exhibition at Viktor Wynd Fine Art, Stephen Wright has produced a mass of work which explores his sense of loss and bereavement after the death of three close family members.
The work is a series of constructions, stuck together and painted and daubed. It resembles South American folk art of Haitian voodoo. There are dozens of distressed and destroyed dolls, reams of scrawled text, hundreds of beads, buttons and sequins. The work is powerful and primal, vibrant and visceral. It's a carnival for the dead. Wright is channelling memories, fragments of time and moments of very personal narratives through worn, discarded and decorated objects.
It's an overwhelming experience, a total environment where it's hard to separate single works from the overall installation. In fact, Wright has turned his home into a complete environment, the House of Dreams Museum. This is his first solo gallery show.
The work has a clear debt to outsider art, although Wright's background is far from outsider. He's run a studio designing handpainted and printed fabrics, worn by the likes of Vanessa Redgrave, Judi Dench and Shirley Bassey. He's designed his own fashion collection sold at Liberty, Harvey Nics and Bloomingdales. And was head stylist at Elle Decoration.
It's obvious though that that work � mere decoration � was just a warm up for this, an artist in full swing.
In a vibrant, colourful and anarchic exhibition at Viktor Wynd Fine Art, Stephen Wright has produced a mass of work which explores his sense of loss and bereavement after the death of three close family members.
The work is a series of constructions, stuck together and painted and daubed. It resembles South American folk art of Haitian voodoo. There are dozens of distressed and destroyed dolls, reams of scrawled text, hundreds of beads, buttons and sequins. The work is powerful and primal, vibrant and visceral. It's a carnival for the dead. Wright is channelling memories, fragments of time and moments of very personal narratives through worn, discarded and decorated objects.
It's an overwhelming experience, a total environment where it's hard to separate single works from the overall installation. In fact, Wright has turned his home into a complete environment, the House of Dreams Museum. This is his first solo gallery show.
The work has a clear debt to outsider art, although Wright's background is far from outsider. He's run a studio designing handpainted and printed fabrics, worn by the likes of Vanessa Redgrave, Judi Dench and Shirley Bassey. He's designed his own fashion collection sold at Liberty, Harvey Nics and Bloomingdales. And was head stylist at Elle Decoration.
It's obvious though that that work � mere decoration � was just a warm up for this, an artist in full swing.