Cut Copy Culture: Karl Shoobridge

Overview

Karl Shoobridge’s Cut Copy Culture exhibition is not without thought provoking undertones. In his latest exhibition, Shoobridge explores the success of artworks that have been produced en masse in artist factories, and then testing these reproduced images for substantive meaning when placed in a new context.

The prime interest of Shoobridge’s exhibition is the search for cultural significance and new value systems. The artwork we are seeing reproduced is today taking a turn towards the digital. Shoobridge is exploring this, taking the time to meticulously hand paint images that would have otherwise been churned out by assistants.

Shoobridge has taken the core of these digitally reproduced artworks, cropping and dragging the timeframe and hierarchies of the initial painting to expel any original meaning. What we are left with, and subsequently what we will see in his exhibition, are works of art with new signifiers and value systems.

The idea of the exhibition is, through long-term experience and intimate understanding, to get us thinking about the construction of an image. Overall, Shoobridge is using his works to suggest the finished form of an image is only part of the artwork, and we need to also look at the processes and techniques employed in its creation.