Family

In this work Gareth Sansom used a mix of approaches from stylised quasi-pop abstraction to photographs and ‘doodle’-style figuration. Images of a bra-clad guitarist (upside down) and members of his family, are mingled with symbols of personal significance – daggers, crosses, a wigwam-like structure, red and white ‘brickwork’ – exploring personal identity through what the artist has termed ‘a stream of consciousness’ approach to drawing’.

As a radical technique, collage was ideal for Sansom who used it as one of an array of disruptive ‘tactics’ to challenge aesthetic conventions and find new ground in art. Here he disrupted the illusory surface of the painting through the flattening effect of each photograph, whilst also interfering with the purity of materials conventional to painting or drawing, through introduction of these elements of ‘reality’.