WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 17TH 2.00-4.00pm Roger Stevens Lecture Theatre 20
For the last few years, Scottish artist Janice McNab has been working on a series of paintings based on the lives of people suffering from diverse and life-threatening physical reactions to chemical poisoning, both at home and in the workplace. She paints quiet and personal accounts of the confined life that is now their fate. The intrusive voyeurism of McNab's photographs has been tempered by the language of painting. The work is on a knife-edge between standing for a cause and the descriptive study of withdrawal. This contradiction is highlighted by the medium of paint, which slows down the intake of content, takes it to a deeper settling ground, and finally locks it into consciousness. Without any soul-stirring device and little concern for special effects, but an interest in the intimate and the personal, McNab brings her investigation to a uniquely far-reaching result.
