GBP 25.00
‘Watching a Supermodel Sleep on a Plane’ is a curated selection of images found on British online media and news outlet websites archiving ‘clickbait’ images that appear as advertising within these pages. Hutchinson’s focus on these works is to highlight the absurdity of these functional images that use fear, persuasion, and visual stimuli to generate both advertising revenue and to sell items and services of value to consumers. Often these images target viewers physical appearance of themselves, using widespread concerns of ageing, body shape and illness to create a desire and need to use these services. The focus is on analysing these images is to assess and question the definition of ‘truth’ within their physical appearance, compared to the lifestyle or product they are selling, especially within the context of them appearing on ‘trusted’ media sources and how photography and images (regardless of ‘believable’ aesthetics) are used within marketing and to emotionally connect with an audience
Sam Hutchinson (b, 1993, Sunderland) is an artist, photographer and designer based in Leeds UK. He works for Village Books, and is a co-founder and director of SCREW Gallery.
Hutchinson works predominantly with photography, image-making and sculpture, alongside appropriation, installation, and publishing. Thematically, this is focused on exploring the politics of images and the associations formed through familiar aesthetics and the representation of both reality and truth in an overly saturated visual landscape. This manifests through a surreal take on its most banal forms - stock photography, corporate design, public advertising etc. By creating a fictional, exaggerated take on current visual trends, the viewer is exposed to a reworking of a post-industrial cityscape. Tropes of class, religion, humour, and learned beliefs are re-contextualised- the evolution of these forms as a cultural identity, developing and evolving in definition since the start of the Millennium.
Selected exhibitions include: ‘The Private Exorcism of Mary Magdalene’ 2022, a collaborative show with Dudley, at Cheap Cheap Gallery in Birmingham. ’Silicone Valley Tribal Tattoo’, 2022, a solo exhibition at Wet Dove Tail in Middlesbrough. ‘502 Bad Gateway’, 2022, a group show curated by Luke Overin and Bronze Age at SET, Kensington. ‘The Ceremonial Burning of a Turtleneck’, 2021, a group show at SCREW Gallery. Selected publications include ‘Uninvited Guest’ and ‘Amazon is Burning’ 2022/2023, as part of Hutchinson’s own ‘Tomb Stone Happy Slap’ edition, ‘Watching a Supermodel Sleep on a Plane (Bronze Age), 2022, ‘Formal Mourning’ 2021 & ‘Hope Hope’ 2020 (self-published) and ‘Two Thousand and Nineteen *84’ (commissioned by The Tetley) 2019.