¨The Found Art Collages¨ found on walls and telephone poles are part of a public discourse. People put things up on walls... posters. This advertising is very ephimeral. Virtually none of the things I´ve photographed exist anymore...
PostDF .- What do you expect from your first exhibition in Mexico?
John
Parkes . - I believe it will be successful. I´ve had a number of shows in
Toronto and I´ve shown some of my stuff in LA.
PostDF .-
What kind of work do you do?
John
Parkes.- The kind of work that I do is edgy and contemporary and quite
abstract, appeals to people who are young and are interested in city life.
PostDF .-
How did you come up with the idea of working with telephone poles and walls?
John Parkes.- It’s a long story because I started doing it back 1989 when I had my first show in Toronto. The show was images that I’d taken, and it happened to be a wall that had all sorts of posters mostly for bands and singers and bars… I shot them in black and white and it was very successful. Ever since then it’s been my focus…
PostDF.-
How do you describe your work?
John Parkes.- Neil Postman had this theory… that all cultures have an underlying dialogue, he called it public discourse and what that dialogue does is talk about the things that are important to us as a society and it’s revealed in the movies we watch, the TV shows we like, the advertisement we read about and the things we buy, the religions we practice and those things reveal our sense of values, our morals, those things that are important to us, as people who live in modern society. My feeling is that the kind of photography that I do “The found art collages” found on walls and telephone poles are part of that public discourse, are part of that dialogue because people put things up on walls… posters and whatever they are advertising, selling and promoting things trying to get us to buy things, is part of that dialogue. The work that I do do is very ephemeral, virtually none of the things that I have photographed exist anymore, they are up temporarily and they get torn down, plastered over, they get removed, in some ways deformed. What I like of them in particular is that very often they are multilayered and you end up getting images next to text that wasn’t intended, sometimes the combination is ironic, sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s serious and that appeals to me a lot. I think we spend so much time doing other things that we’ve forgotten to look around us and one of the things that I want to do with my photography is to show people that there is art and there are things that are interesting all around us and we need to take the time to see it. I’m always very pleased when someone looks at a piece of my work and comments about how interesting it is and they discovered that they walk passed that place many times without paying any attention to it and so... I’ve shot in Europe, Turkey, California and this material is everywhere. It’s a worldwide thing while cultures are different we all have values and morals and things that are important to us. The posters go up no matter where they are because people are always trying to convince people to do things, buy things, they are always promoting things. Mexico has been a paradise for me… I get to walk with my camera and everywhere I look I see these things … for me that is very stimulating.
John Parkes
www.johnparkesphotography.com
Galería Yuri Lopez Kullins
Baja California 349 Condesa
https://yurilopezkullins.wordpress.com/
Galería Yuri Lopez Kullins
Baja California 349 Condesa
https://yurilopezkullins.wordpress.com/