John Atherton

My current body of work confronts the traditional role of the portrait. I am using the portrait archetype, not as memorial or commemoration of likeness fixed in time, but as a catalyst for the personal and private speculations of the viewer. The viewer’s own personal responses projected onto the portrait are the real subject of the work.

These are, in a sense, anti-portraits. The presence of the sitters, the original subjects of the portraits, are hard to detect and decipher amidst the considered confusion of layers of paper, cardboard and misprinted imagery. These ‘layers of time’ are the history of the portrait, but a portrait that has broken down, allowing new memories to be created in the process. The ephemeral and utilitarian materials of everyday use, discarded, found, recycled, re-used and reappropriated, are employed here as metaphors for the fragmentary nature of memory and the passage of time.