On the Way to the Ocean is the latest exhibition from Boo Ritson, a British artist expressly preoccupied with the notion of the American Dream. Best known for her innovative use of people as living canvases to depict a broad range of American
On the Way to the Ocean is the latest exhibition from Boo Ritson, a British artist expressly preoccupied with the notion of the American Dream. Best known for her innovative use of people as living canvases to depict a broad range of American stereotypes (from air hostesses to cowboys), in this instance Ritson has chosen to explore her favoured subject through its country's landscape.
"The works take viewers on a journey towards the ocean, passing through an assortment of scenic environments which depict a virtual America very much of Ritson’s own imagining..."
The display consists of a selection of images and sculptures, constructed as layered collages (“variously moulded, photographed, digitally worked and reprinted"); and featuring characters and spaces that represent aspects of the proverbial American Dream, particularly freedom and limitless possibility. The works take viewers on a journey towards the ocean, passing through an assortment of scenic environments which depict a virtual America very much of Ritson’s own imagining (some images were taken in her English hometown, Chesham). Beautiful in their evocation of the “New World” full of hope and prospect, the works are equally imbued with a sense of the unknown and, at times, the ominous: the glinting eyes of a snake curled dozily among mossy rocks or the brilliant-red rowing boat, strangely void of oars and human inhabitants, floating adrift in the open sea.
Ritson's chief angle of investigation lies in the relationship of identity and representation to place, her multi-layering technique of constructing the landscapes serving to mirror the fragmented and complex nature of identity. Audiences are induced to question what is real and what is artificial in these fabricated landscapes, at first glance so natural in appearance; as well as their heightened promise of infinite possibility, calling to mind the hopes (and innate failures) at the heart of the American Dream.
On the Way to the Ocean is currently on display at Poppy Sebire and runs until May 5.
Text by Daisy Woodward
