Queer Kraak

Queer Kraak Exhibition
25th - 31st August, Kraak gallery, Manchester.

Group show of Queer manchester Artists to coincide with Pride weekend.
Initially I thought this was a dreadful premise for an exhibition. Actually, I still do. My sexuality is not relevant to the work I make, and generally I don't really care for work that is too focused on the artist's personal life, prefering work that has a universality about it and allows for a broader interpretation, without the viewer having to be aware of any background information to be able to appreciate it. But, I thought I might as well do it anyway.

The work I made for this show reflected my discomfort with the theme of the show. I never make explictly personal work, and although I'm fantastically comfortable with my sexuality; its mine, and not up for interpretation or debate as I put forward my art to be. So the work I showed incorporated a very personal element; I used old family photos, the first time I'd done this. But the way I edited them negated that personal element. I painted objects and images from my memories of my family into the photographs, but these were so personal that there would be no possibility of any viewer being able to gain any insight into the story behind the image. The work was deliberately ambigious to the point of being meaningless.

Images from the private view are available here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44087667@N06/4992358135/in/photostream/