29 March – 17 May
Workplace Gallery,
In a new body of work Merrick has drawn upon colour-coded variations of standard 4 x 4 foot units of plasterboard. Selecting each board from a standardised industrial lexicon of building materials, he creates ‘surrogate’ Colour Field paintings, which are then punctuated by collages cut from an ongoing archive of National Geographic and Wallpaper* magazines. Delicately pinned to each board are faded pseudo-scientific photographs of foreign and exotic plants (monolithic Cacti and smaller species of desert flora). Grouped and pinned in faded constellations and pitched against images of mountains and wilderness – The Great Outdoors – alongside the more contemporary escapology of Wallpaper* Magazine’s luxurious Modernist interiors. Merrick’s collages combine nostalgia for the global reportage of the past in dialogic compositions with images and motifs of style and decadence; creating pictorial iconographies and mythological narratives. Set upon metallic surfaces and pastel hues that reflect back America as consumed through the eyes of a working class Britain of the 1970’s and 80’s.
