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You might just forget:Sarah Ryan and Megan Keating
12 rooms... 12 vacancies: Tracy Cooper
Surface: curated by Edwina Bartleme
It is not often that you can walk into one of the gallery versions of a 'megaplex' and experience the serendipity of a group of four exhibitions which seem to have enough in common to present what appears to be an extended curatorial rationale. However, at Smith + Stoneley recently, there seemed to be a canny presentation of exhibitions by Roderick Bunter, Sarah
Ryan and Megan Keating and Tracy Cooper as well as a group show, Surface curated by Edwina Bartleme and featuring work by David Clark, Rosz Craig, Neil Degney, Ciel Fuller, Victoria Hunt, Miffy Petroleum, Mandy Ridley, Mona Ryder and Kirsti Watson.
In Trademark, Roderick Bunter presented a series of immaculately painted and collaged commercial trademarks and signs ranging from hazard warnings to the cherubic baby face on Gerber baby care products. These are recurring motifs in his work and his paintings here seemed to straddle design and advertising. His painting style was clean and liquid, like the advertising and media through which those trademarks become familiar, indeed, ubiquitous. However, there was often a glib or sardonic twist in the combinations which comprised each work, a will towards undermining the 'meta'- tendencies of capitalism. An undercurrent in Bunter's work was an awareness of communication: not so much that it flows, but that it stalls and breaks down. In this respect, some of his sharp and acerbic quips were not readily apparent, and like conundrums required some deciphering, some delving below the surface. He has engaged in a very personal way with a new 'universal' language and symbolic