Andrew Robards’ ongoing body of work draws upon his fascination with the western genre and its associated iconography. As my collaborator, I decided that the nature of this show as championing the cast off, re-appropriation and rearrangement, I would take from the outset – initially stating my own take on his constant themes as an artist – playing him as much as he will play me. In this sense, Andrew will be forced to also look at himself through my eyes/brush/camera and take it from there.
I looked at the nature of the cowboys presented in his works as flawed heroes – a constant mythology that is so characterised to the extent of its own ultimate cliche, ruin and decay. The western figures I have created are in static, although the medium of animation presents a pictorial evolution of motion, they, like the figures depicted in popular culture and film, cannot escape their fate.
Figures such as jesse james, ned kelly, butch cassidy have entered a wider discourse of which immense historical and cultural mythology surrounds them – of which their death is the catalyst , as for the outlaw it is the moment they enter history. My tribute is both to this predicament, in aim of its liberation but ultimate futility, but also to Andrew as I admire his obsession with a unique subject. My video takes the form of a dream, rather than myth – as these figures have been liberated as myths throughout history.
“Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamic of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions sown are directly valid for all mankind”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
Stop Frame Animation exhibited at Mori Gallery, October 2012 as part of Can’t Melt Cheese Twice Group Show – where the parameters were to comment on another artist’s work.