Hybrids – International Contemporary Painting

Hybrids is a commissioned essay that accompanied a major show at Tate Liverpool in 2001, which included the first significant showing of artists such as David Reed, Monique Prieto, Fabian Marcaccio, Franz Ackermann and others. The essay explores contemporary manifestations of painting through various systems of representation, modernism and abstraction (hence the title), and presents these in a broader cultural context. The essay approaches an analysis of each painter while building up a collective picture of ‘hybridity’ and its significance for contemporary painting practice.

The rationale for the project was underpinned by questions about shifts in perception, manufacture, uses of history, in connection with painting practice. As a model I had in mind Frederic Jameson’s approach in his Postmodernism or the Logic of Late Capitalism, where he attempts a critical journey through the different vectors of space (architecture), and time (video) in order to articulate his themes. Within this context I attempted to move through various contrasting models of what hybridity might be, while articulating the various positions of each individual painter concerned.

The exhibition and essay were successful in bringing attention to a number of artists who have since become prominent within contemporary practice. Evidence of the debate that both exhibition and essay created can be felt in another publication: Critical perspectives on Contemporary painting: Hybridity, Hegemony, Historicism edited by Jonathan Harris, Liverpool University Press 2003. The book was suggested by the themes of Hybrids, as Harris stated in his introduction: “The essays in this collection stem partly from an exhibition held at Tate Liverpool between April and June 2001 […] The exhibition’s title ‘Hybrids: International Contemporary painting’ announced itself as, amongst other things, a practical interrogation of the meaning of ‘painting’ in 2001”, and in turn I was invited to review this publication for Art Monthly in 2004.