The Vagaries and Misconceptions of the Modern Man

‘The Vagaries and Misconceptions of the Modern Man’ brings together recent sculptural works by Ralph Darbyshire, Richard Hollinshead and Kenneth Ross in an exhibition that explores the fallibilities in seemingly certain masculine positions. Figurative in the broadest sense, these sculptural works collectively engage with difficult material, whether brashly explicit or operating as a disquieting undercurrent; and whether concerned with political unrest, sexuality, violence or intergenerational dispute.

Ralph Darbyshire manipulates and layers materials, objects and imagery to create complex works that offer the viewer a sustained encounter that is at once seductive and confusing. Ostentatious and theatrical, it is biography that is most apparent in these works, with a myriad of ephemera vying for attention: Post-It notes and doodles, a tricorn hat covered in synthetic fur, vintage erotica, a matador’s espada (sword) assembled from submachine guns, window frames appropriated from the ruins of the Rivesaltes concentration camp in the South of France. Darbyshire reflects his own internal chaos and inability to process these visual inputs, with his sculptures aiming to sanction and legitimise the act of ‘not knowing’, with information stacked to the point of overload.

Richard Hollinshead references the visual language of classical Greek sculpture, and the idealised male form it promotes, to explore contemporary male identity. Works such as Dough Boy and the Iliac Crest and Sanit Forma use compositional elements from classical statues such as the Farnese Heracles and Farnese Hermes and the Barberini Faun, establishing a relationship to gym culture, male body image and the concept of the mid-life crisis. Vax Laocoön, which repositions the classical sculpture Laocoön and His Sons into a suburban and domestic context, considers issues of fatherhood and the subtleties of intergenerational relationships within the family unit.

Kenneth Ross’ interests lie in aspects relating to the structure of the banal: the cultural proliferation of the ‘Banal’, its glut and reverence, ‘Death and the Abyss’. His new works explore the production and pretence of this system; how it is facilitated by exploiting the pathology of the image, and propagated and disseminated through the inherent violence within.