Employing a wide variety of painting styles, Alison Berry’s work explores the complex and interchangeable relationship between two opposing states of mind; the sublime and the ridiculous. This relationship has been the subject of philosophical study for many centuries from Longinus through Immanuel Kant to Slavoj Zizek. Alison uses the imagery of tartan, the fabric pattern created by woven thread, as the vehicle for this exploration.
Tartan is a textile of contradiction both visually and symbolically. Simultaneously traditional and rebellious this cloth is intensely human, surrounded by real and mythical historical associations. Keeping these grounded associations in mind, Alison’s work draws out tartan’s potential, pushing the imagery to the point where fabric pattern is transcended: associations with the grid and modernity, science and technology become apparent implying containment or release, order or overwhelming potential.
Through scale and colour palette as well as subject matter, the loaded visual language of several movements are referenced from Abstract Expressionism to the neo-Dada movement. Alison’s hope is that neither one nor other of these conflicting movements is championed. Instead tartan’s ambiguous character invites the observer to travel between the states of mind of the sublime and the ridiculous, to acknowledge this innately human experience and above all to embrace it.
