14 Dec 2018
Events
Sigbjørn Bratlie: Bob’s Your Uncle
Bob’s Your Uncle is an exhibition of installations by artist Sigbjørn Bratlie (Norway), along with photographs and videoworks made in collaboration with photographer Arne Langleite and cinematographer Askild Vik Edvardsen.
The exhibition consists of a series of interrelated works that explore the concept of the artist as antihero.
Influenced by popular culture – comics, movies, TV and advertising – the show seeks to represent and reflect upon contemporary visual culture in terms of confusion and bewilderment. This antiheroic perspective involves the appropriation of a specific type of language: While using the cheap, easily digestible devices of mass entertainment and advertising, the works still try to convey a message.
At times, the work is more about the struggle to make sense and to be meaningful than anything else. It also taps into some of the philosophical concerns of the early conceptualists: Their interest in sign systems and Saussurian linguistics, while channelling into it a humorous lightness or irreverence that is primarily influenced by comics and slapstick movies. In essence, the work tries to both represent and make linguistic sense of the endless torrent of mass media imagery that surrounds us today.