Concrete Playground

Chris Town has traveled the world and collected, well, bits and pieces. Posters, bandages, ticket stubs, cigarette packets and bodily fluids are all assembled in collages that remind one of the horror vacui of some Grateful Dead posters.

I liken Chris Town’s work to the 'Poubelles' of Arman, a Nouveau Realist artist from 1960s Paris. Arman and his friends worked to promote what Camille Bryen called the “adventure of the object”. Arman, and Town in turn, are indebted simultaneously to the Cubists who championed the use of shallow space, and the Dadaists who constantly suggested the absurd.

Perhaps Town’s work has not really conceptually furthered the ideas of Arman, but there is something to be curious about here. The use of collage allows Town to suggest the disorientation that capitalist subjects experience as they rely more and more on objects to construct their sense of identity and place. Town’s works are dense, colourful accumulations. Go down to China Heights on Friday, enjoy an early evening beer, and let Town lead you through his accumulated history.