Abstract

An exhibition of paintings by Andrew Bracey, winner of the ‘Nottingham Castle 2013 Solo Show’ prize was shown in the Castle’s Long Gallery from 8th December 2014 until 18th January 2015 .

ReconFigure Paintings is a series of work by Andrew Bracey, winner of the ‘Nottingham Castle
Open 2013 Solo Show’ prize, that features parasitic, painted additions to the ‘host’ human figures
within existing historical paintings.

Bracey selected 20 figurative paintings from the Castle’s Fine Art collection as a foundation on
which to create a body of new work. Responding to the diversity and breadth of this collection,
Bracey worked on high quality reproductions of popular (and some lesser known) oil paintings
that are usually on display in the Long Gallery – each varying in style, period and type of figuration.
These reproductions have been worked over with crystalline paintwork, using the triangle as a
simplest shape from which to build a complex structure.

Within his work Bracey questions the role of the original, the reproduction (in print, online or in a
catalogue for example) and exhibition display. Here, he has selected original canvases from the
collection, created his own responses to these paintings, and enlarged a print to fill a whole wall to
create a surface upon which these new works now sit. By displaying these new paintings en masse
and with an unclear classification, the artist‘s interventional marks create some order within the
diversity of the original selection, whilst also celebrating it:

“The eye alternates between my addition to/removal of the figure and the background of the original,
something that is usually sidelined in interpretation by the dominant figure. Despite a consistency of
[self-imposed] rules that are adopted when painting, each work takes on its own unique character
and aims to alter the viewer’s perception of the original source. I am more interested in the
possibilities for interpretation offered by standing with, and in front of, the image, rather than in the
facts of narrative and art historical readings of the original painting(s) [i.e., through museum labels
for example]; my works are created through the activity of looking hard.” Andrew Bracey, 2014
The ‘parent’ works (the original source), are either seen directly alongside the ReconFigure
Paintings, or less formally within the new Permanent Collection display throughout the
remainder of the Long Gallery, highlighting the artist’s references in direct comparison, or
proposing something the viewer is required to discover for themselves.
Andrew