JUSTIN EAGLE Food for the poor daddy not home from work yet 

An exhibition of new work by London based artist Justin Eagle. ‘Food for the poor daddy not home from work yet’ features a selection of large-scale digitally printed images hung from the ceiling of the gallery, exploring notions of visual conception and addressing themes of aspiration, human desire and nostalgia.

In this new body of work Eagle explores the ennui at the heart of society. Grappling with notions of boredom and the unrealized desire to escape from monotony, Eagle explores self-inflicted neurosis and the self-help guides that offer futile redemption.

Consisting of a series of rendered images created from a 3 dimensional computer modelling programme, the digital prints feature objects that have been altered to enable them to contain other practical items. In one image, a dog’s spine becomes a vessel for a CD rack, in another a penny-farthing is reimagined as a plant-pot holder.

The images are approximately 5 feet wide by 6 feet high and printed onto blue backed paper, a material used commonly in commercial printing and billboard artwork. These images are suspended from the ceiling creating what Eagle terms “an interruption to the gallery’s architecture”. The mechanics of the exhibition shift the way in which the viewer moves around the space and offers a dual aspect: confronting them with the large images as they enter the gallery and the flat blue visual plane of the blue backed paper as they leave.

Eagle’s interest in advancement is manifested in the use of software programmes that change not just the way we produce images and objects, but also the way in which we consume and perceive imagery. As Colin Perry writes “Eagle produces images that mix desire and danger. His works call up a host of questions about the process of reproduction and distribution of popular images…His works look precision-engineered, are cool and quick to the pulse of this post-Fordist world.”

There is an absurdity to Eagle’s digital prints, a romantic oddness and whimsical quality, yet each has the potential to be realized sculpturally – a 3 dimensional CD rack dog produced on an automated wire bending machine will accompany the show – and each demonstrates what American anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan describes as mankind’s development “through the slow accumulations of experimental knowledge”.



Justin Eagle (b.1977) lives and works in London. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2004 and was artist in residence at The Florence Trust, London 2010-11. He had his first solo exhibition ‘A Solitary Cosmopolitan’ at Arena Gallery, Liverpool in 2010 followed by his first London solo exhibition ‘is he, isn’t she’ at VITRINE Bermondsey Square in 2011. Group exhibitions include: Art/Converters!, Studio 1.1, London (2012); Edwin Burdis/Justin Eagle, Lombardium, London (2011); ‘Florence Trust Summer Show’, London (2011); Fabricatecstasy, Studio 52 Hoxton Square, London (2011); ‘Monday Monday’ Cell Project Space, London (2010), ‘the milkplus bar’ Josh Lilley, London (2010), ‘TWIG’ Vitrine, London (2010) and ‘il alla a lai de l’ail’ Crimes Town, London (2010). His work is included in private collections internationally. Justin Eagle is represented by Vitrine.