Melanie Russell describes her work as ‘an investigation into flatness’. In her compositions, figure and ground are given equal priority; the subject has to fight it out with the ‘backdrop’ for the viewer’s attention. It’s not just a visual levelling; the implication is that objects, patterns and people all exist in the same flat world. A decorative domestic scene is turned into an image of human-objects overwhelmed by their surroundings.
In her current work, through painting, drawing and collage, Melanie Russell develops her ongoing interest in visual perception, where foregrounds and backgrounds hold an ambiguous relationship to create levels…
Melanie Russell describes her work as ‘an investigation into flatness’. In her compositions, figure and ground are given equal priority; the subject has to fight it out with the ‘backdrop’ for the viewer’s attention. It’s not just a visual levelling; the implication is that objects, patterns and people all exist in the same flat world. A decorative domestic scene is turned into an image of human-objects overwhelmed by their surroundings.
In her current work, through painting, drawing and collage, Melanie Russell develops her ongoing interest in visual perception, where foregrounds and backgrounds hold an ambiguous relationship to create levels of flatness. She begins to question what constitutes negative space when its given priority, and whether it still remains negative when it is the subject.
By simplifying her subject matter into shapes, flat fields of colour and areas of mark making, an image is pushed towards the unrecognizable. Limited information is used to communicate scenes which are both simple and complicated, bordering between representation and abstraction. Materials, shape and colour are pared down to a minimum.
The materials Russell works with determine the approach and outcome; choosing how the work turns out in terms of scale, colour and presentation.
The subject matter itself is sourced from found images, chosen for shape and the artist’s surrounding environment, which is recorded through observational drawing and photography. Russell is increasingly interested in questioning what comes first, subject matter or materials; she asks “materials determine the approach and outcome but where does the subject matter enter the equation?”
Born in 1977 in Gloucestershire, Russell is a graduate of the University of Wales (2000) and The Slade School of Art, London (2004). Russell has exhibited widely in London and throughout the UK. Awards have included the Slade’s Bursary Painters’ Stainers in 2002/2003 and the AHRB in 2004. In 2006 and 2007 she was shortlisted for the Celeste Art Prize, and last year she was one of the winners of the Jerwood Contemporary Painters Prize 2007, which has consequently made her work even more desirable in recent months.
