Palisade.
2023.
[These] uncanny paintings revisit the familiarity of the suburban environment, peeling away the veneer of normality like strips of wallpaper to expose fragments of other stories buried between the layers.
Sophie Lampert
For God’s Sake Get Out, 2023. Oil on board, 60 x 60cm
Bright, Sharp Gaze, 2023. Oil on board, 60 x 60cm
Sugar Doodle 2023. Oil on board, 60 x 60cm
One of Us, 2023. Oil on board, 60 x 60cm
Get Nervous, 2023. Oil on board, 90 x 60cm
Heavy Spells, 2023. Oil on board, 60 x 60cm
Maniac, 2023. Oil on linen, 155 x 105cm
Catchpenny, 2023, Oil on board, 40 x 25cm. The Freak, 2023 oil on board, 40 x 25cm
Academy, 2023. Oil on board, 35 x 50cm
What, Me Worry? 2023. Graphite and acrylic on board, 35 x 60cm
Hot Creepers, 2023. Oil on board, 30 x 60cm
‘nothing happened but the wallpaper’
Dorothea Tanning
Drew Bickford’s paintings explore the fragmentary nature of memory and probe the veneer of the suburban cocoon. Using hypnotic decorative motifs, text and images from true crime, horror and pop culture, he creates uncanny, provocative paintings that make direct reference to early 20th century collage techniques.
Growing up in the suburbs of the 80’s, monotony seemed to be a prerequisite for a healthy childhood, an escape to other worlds was inevitable. Sunday movie matinees transported us through the flickering screen to a glittering fantasy. Grimm’s fairy tales were replaced by Rosemary’s Baby, Devil Doll and The Amityville Horror – "For God’s sake get out!"
Home was no longer a benign refuge. Suddenly our parents were zombies that had just walked off the set of Dawn of the Dead and our siblings, instruments of demonic forces. Malevolence seeped out between the smiling faces of the floral wallpaper, like a tobacco stain creeping in silence. Those once straight walls and neat corners were now decidedly warped.
A fascination with the horror film genre is evident in ‘Palisade’, with cleverly overlaid fragments of home and horror, stitched together to create images that appear as slightly disjointed collages. The inclusion of text intensifies this effect, drawing on the Dada fascination with mass produced ready-made materials such as advertising images and newspaper articles. Cutting and rearranging image and text into collages, the Dadaists attempted to disrupt the way information is organised, rejecting the ideas and directives originally intended to be conveyed. ‘Palisade’ draws on this history to explore random consumption facilitated by digital technology. Scrolling through hundreds of images, our brains collage shards of text and image, we are unable to slow the relentless tempo to fully digest what we see. The Sunday matinee has exploded into a thousand shiny pieces, pumped itself up on steroids and gone viral.
Bickford’s uncanny paintings revisit the familiarity of the suburban environment, peeling away the veneer of normality like strips of wallpaper, to expose fragments of other stories buried between the layers. In turn he asks us to consider how we experience the ambiguity of representation to construct our own personal narratives.
Sophie Lampert