Nigel Grimmer - Minor Monuments

About

Nigel Grimmer's work investigates the relationship between public and private images explored through the medium of the family album. Grimmer's new exhibition at Bloc Projects focuses on the last pages of the album - on the replacement of one generation with the next, the appearance of fresh faces, the loss of familiar ones and the editing out or forgetting of marginal or unruly characters. Grimmer presents a collection of photographic reproductions and objects both made and found; antiques, craft objects, and debris which are suggested as souvenirs of lived experiences; domestic detritus which may be judged as family heirlooms one moment, charity shop fodder the next. While certain sculptures illustrate memories for which no physical memento exists, some objects act as false evidence of events he has not experienced. The viewer is invited to create a narrative from these ambiguous snapshot moments. Recently Grimmer began disrupting the integrity of the picture plane in his photographs in order to highlight the flatness and artificiality of the photographic object. He is currently experimenting with the introduction of a secondary picture plane within the photographic frame; for his new series Art Drag Album, a selection of which are presented in the exhibition, a collection of kitsch portraits appear within the photographs to create an illusory and humorous slippage between their foregrounds and backgrounds. Nigel Grimmer is Senior Lecturer in Visual Arts Practice at The University of Bedfordshire; he is a sculpture graduate of Sheffield Hallam University. His work is supported by Arts Council England.