Talented Joburg-based painter has passion for colours
ROSEBANK – Neill Wright has hosted several art exhibitions at Circa over the past years.
The title Blizzard Head is a metaphorical reference to a heady, intoxicated and somewhat overwhelming, post-fall state of mind.
Neill Wright is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Johannesburg. His bold, multi-layered and colourful work braves the world of social commentary through a variety of mediums, including painting, printmaking and sculpture.
He draws inspiration from the interconnected worlds of media, popular culture, politics and societal interactions in an attempt to create panoramic views on current issues, hardships, complexities and paradoxes present within South Africa and to a large extent, our global society as a whole.
The works in Blizzard Head are ruminations on Wright’s own life experiences as well as his larger questions surrounding the human paradox: our capability for inventiveness and adaption, versus our careless capacity for destruction.
The seductive, bright and layered work presents a new world and a possible new life before us; an alluring wilderness beyond the confines of the canvas and sculpted surfaces.
The question is, what sort of life will this be? Euphoric and exciting perhaps, but also possibly menacing, perilous and confusing.
In a recent essay on the artist’s work, University of Cape Town art theorist and lecturer, Andrew Lamprecht stated that in the wilderness Wright has created, he ‘portrays nuclear proliferation, genetic manipulation and the constant, unremitting environmental disaster that we are all heir and progenitor to through happy, bright, even cartoonesque layerings and juxtapositions’.
Wright believes that people exist in an exciting yet somewhat frightening time of discovery and renewal as a new path to our own imagined destination is cut, while along the way acknowledging and confronting the darkness and weight of the past as a means to affect positive change.
“We are at a crossroads, as our metaphorical nausea within the collective human psyche gradually begins to wane, making way for what I hope will be a renewed and clear state of mind, fit to confront and deal with the multitude of issues with which humanity is faced.”
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