DIRTY GLAMOUR     

Recent paintings –THERESA BYRNES

Opening Reception

6 – 9pm Friday Feb 11

FEB 11 thru March 6

True beauty is not shiny, packaged, new, modified, augmented but the graceful death of matter.

After September 11^th 2001 the imperative to make paintings archival, to exist for centuries, seemed suddenly ludicrous. The vulnerability of the human species and its civilizations became central to my concept of beauty and art. Histories, lives, architecture blown to bits, fragments of shelter, weather-worn - that is material to be relied on.

I paint on old plywood fragments; I let its decay direct the becoming of the painting. My works on paper use oil, salt water and human hair. It is a mix we spill into the oceans. I use what we want to hide and forget as a medium; as an artist that is a powerful pigment. I harness the results of destruction to make art, to find beauty in our missteps and to document them.

Glamour has a past; to achieve its polish requires cultural hegemony; to resist is to re-define beauty.

“ . . . Byrnes is a provocateur whose sometimes uncomfortable offerings are designed to provoke a reaction in her audience. And by placing her body and mind at the centre of her art she challenges her own interpretation and her own vision. It is no surprise that her work has a strong evolutionary thread. It is organic, earthy, and, like the cycle of life theme of many of her paintings, it grows. Uncompromisingly she is woman channeling life, death, fear and joy, through an exposed, vulnerable human shell. It is all on the line, and that is the wonder of Byrnes’ art." - Martin Newman, art critic The Daily Mirror, London, 2010.

BIOGRAPHY

Theresa Byrnes began to exhibit her paintings in 1986 at the age of 16. She began performance art in 1988 and it has become an integral part of her arts practice. In 1996 Theresa founded the Theresa Byrnes Foundation Inc., which funded a research fellowship to further gene-transfer therapy. Byrnes published her autobiography ‘The Divine Mistake’ in 1999 (Pan Macmillan, Australia). Theresa moved to New York in 2000.