John Strutton. Anna Lies

About

ANNA LIES

She paints pictures, pictures that lie.

Over the past decade or so Strutton has started each day in the studio by making a small drawing on A4 paper. Like a stretch or limbering up exercise this activity was always meant to be an act of just doing something rather than producing anything. Each drawing was stamped, as a way of defacing or invalidating the image, with the words ANNA LIES. Over the years this habit has become an accidental archive of painting without the burden of it becoming visible. The short video work ANNA LIES compresses hundreds of theses images down to 1/30th of a second to form a constantly shifting visual frame over which a narrator throws accusations of deceit, contradiction and irresponsibility. For the duration of the exhibition a number of the original drawings will be shown as a large scale installation.

As part of this show Strutton will also be screening a number of his recent 'Under 5's' video works at the RCA Gorvy Lecture theatre on Monday 20th at 6.30pm. Many of these new 'Under 5's' videos also draw on archives of material that span decades (religious tracts, newspaper cuttings and personal photographs) and have been put together to form a playlist of short anecdotal narratives that warn variously of the dangers from unsolicited leaflets, utopian architecture and impulse eBay purchases.