Derek Boshier’s Reigning Apps And Blogs in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
//Reigning Apps And Blogs, acrylic on canvas, 187 x 122 x 3cm, 2011//
Check out, if you have the chance, Derek Boshier’s giant 2011 work Reigning Apps And Blogs in the summer show curated by Michael Craig Martin at London’s Royal Academy of Arts.
One of Boshier’s early 10s series grouped under the title Paris France, Paris Texas, Paris Hilton, Reigning Apps And Blogs is displayed in the RA’s Gallery III. Like the other main galleries, the walls of this space have been painted in a vibrant colour (in Gallery III’s case, magenta; the Wohl Central Hall, for example, has a turquoise backdrop for artworks).
In the forthcoming Boshier monograph Rethink/Re-entry, artist and writer Christopher Finch points out that Reigning Apps And Blogs reflects Boshier’s “irony-tinged engagement with smartphones and handheld media in general”.
As Finch explains, in the early 10s, Boshier acquired an iPad “which he carries with him and uses as an adjunct studio and portable archive. Paris France, Paris Texas, Paris Hilton is named for one of the constituent paintings . Beyond that, it alludes to the fact that mobile media provides access to just about everything (or offers that illusion)”.
The RA Summer Exhibition runs until August 16. More info here.
Order your copy of Rethink/Re-entry here.