Rose Finn-Kelcey, Research Image, China, 2006
Veteran Conceptual and performance artist Rose Finn-Kelcey has long been interested in the formal qualities of language and the signs and symbols of everyday life, and has a diverse body of work behind her that is both critical and humorous. In 1970, for instance, she placed a flag at the Alexandra Palace in London which carried the words, 'Here is a Gale Warning'. Sure enough, the wind blew.
Reflecting Western bewilderment and fascination with Chinese script, and based on her recent travels, Finn-Kelcey's new show at Milton Keynes Gallery will re-contextualize a number of Chinese pictographic characters that the artist has observed on shop front hoardings, street signage and fairground art in China. Both beautiful and alienating, inviting and impenetrable, Finn-Kelcey's works pose the question, 'how culturally loaded are these otherwise transparent markers of meaning?', to which we might add, how might their symbolic weight alter in the Western gallery context? The prevalence nowadays of these ancient characters in plastic and neon bespeaks both the worldwide Chinese diaspora and the country's own economic renewal. The exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery is the most comprehensive show of Rose Finn-Kelcey's work in almost ten years. On 6 December, Professor Anne Bamford of the University of the Arts, London, will talk about visual literacy in relation to themes raised by the show, while on 17 January the artist will be in conversation with critic, curator and lecturer Guy Brett.
Rose Finn-Kelcey
2 December 2006 - 28 January 2007
Milton Keynes Gallery
900 Midsummer Boulevard
Central Milton Keynes
MK9 3QA
Tel: +44 [0]1908 676 900
www.mk-g.org
)
)
)