Where did I come from? Thankfully this question, which faces any artist, particularly an emerging one, invariably remains unanswered. Artistic origins for the artist, like biological ones for the prep schooler, are most intoxicating and productive when they are left at least partly open. Perhaps it is in the face of an abundance of possibilities generated in pursuit of these origins that the curators of GOLD CARD 1 and GOLD CARD 2 decided to chose those artists whose work they felt most deserved exposure rather than to construct theme shows.
Matthew Bradley's The Nola Rose Candidate was a sculptural manifestation of the mythical future of a long defunct airline. Initially sceptical that my appreciation might have derived solely from the presence of an attractive woman in an airline hostesses uniform, it soon occurred to me that my pulchritudinous experience was wholly contrived by Bradley. His model's statuesque posture, accented with a furrowed brow, articulated the weight of responsibility that comes in the face of potential air disaster, whilst the staid and reassuring design of her suit consoled our fear of such an occurrence. Her presence was a powerful evocation of the nostalgia which characterised the whole work. Being real yet set within a fiction the woman compelled our belief in the myth that Bradley devised. Our immersion in this myth was completed by the dull glow of an airport sign that recalled the half reality of an early morning arrival the groggy transition from the otherworldly aesthetic of airline travel back into the chaos of the normal world.
This sense of dissolution of 'reality' occurred also in the second show of the series, GOLD CARD 2. Before Stephen