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This is an exhibition defined by layers of erasure: there are grainy images of missing people and all have been defaced in some way. White paint washes over facial features, eyes are obscured by spray paint, and words that might have indicated identity have been scribbled over. In one painting a broad smile hangs beneath the covering of a bag. In another, we can discern only the outline of a head that has been obliterated with black paint. The subjects of the works appear to have been maimed, perhaps suffering the loss of a sense: some seem blind, others disfigured so that they will have no sense of smell. A yellowish halo of linseed oil surrounds the background of each face, so they present simultaneously as mutilated victims and as saintly heroes. A tracker dog buried in scribbles of black spray has been painted directly onto a gallery wall. It suggests a futile search. A sad, nostalgic feeling lurks uncomfortably in the background of this exhibition. The images here are time-worn, they have been brutalised with abandon.
Photographs of missing persons invariably evoke a jarring sense of context shift: what was once a family happy-snap has become the forlorn image of someone whose whereabouts are now a source of great anxiety. The smiling faces, cheerfully unaware of the fate before them, arouse our sympathy. These are images from a life that the subjects can never return to. The world comes to associate the picture with the mystery. Carr recognises these as images which bear the weight of heavy projections, from both the family of the missing person and within the popular imagination. The artworks here function as pictorial translations of