Glauce Cerveira

Paintings

Anti-Fashion Series

Oil, acrylic, glass, newsprint, synthetic crystals on canvas and/or board

I want to depict the role of the persona in front of the self and see how much of it (the self) survives the compromises we make.

Paintings have to have a beginning. The ones here start their life as a response to an image or thought, a facet of a conceptual whole that binds them together. In this series of works, fashion is being used both as the subject and as questioning of contemporary behaviour. The 'contents', be it balloons, shoes, cloth or armours, are deliberately disquieting. Their physical presence at the surface of the painting is not one of comfort. The hat eclipses the woman ('The Things We Do For Love'); we do see what she wants us to see, but this does not hold and perhaps what we are left with is an awareness of her insecurity.

Again in 'Comfort and Joy', the red shoes at first gain our attention, but their elegance is replaced by the fear and pain of negotiating this particular painting surface, which is patterned with 'visual holes'. In 'Hot Must Have', we sense the human presence, but the spatial relationships within the canvas negate any interaction. Colour comes forward suggesting slogans or advertisements that occupy the remaining surface. It is a void in which a shimmering ghostly figure seems to be reassured that all is just as it should be.

Text by Gerry Smith