From 24 August, visitors have the opportunity to see a new exhibition entitled New Positions in British Painting at the Telegraph Gallery in Olomouc. One of the five exhibiting artists - representing different positions of contemporary British painting - Justin Mortimer was present at the opening. Among other things, he said a few words about his current creative journey. It is Mortimer who owns the gallery's entrance space, which invites visitors to take a look, as well as his name, which is associated with portraying prominent figures in British society.
Justin Mortimer was born in the Shropshire village of Cosford in 1970. He lived with his family in Somerset, where he attended Wells Cathedral School. He then studied at the Slade School of Art in London from 1988 to 1992. He also currently lives and works in London. He has received numerous awards throughout his life. In 1991 he was the winner of the prestigious BP Portrait Award, given by the National Portrait Gallery, which also holds some of Mortimer's work in its collection. Later, he won the NatWest Art Prize (1996) and the EAST Award (2004). However, he became even more widely known with his controversial portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which he depicted in 1997 (the painting was officially unveiled in May 1998), intended as a commemoration of her 50 years as President of the Royal Society of Art. Mortimer's conception is completely outside the traditional portrait of such a high-profile figure. He captured the Queen against a blank yellow background, placing her alone in part of a black trapezoid - a hint of a throne. The Queen is dressed in a green dress with realistic folds, and a subtle pixel pattern is placed over her body, which seems to blur the image. The biggest reaction, however, was the fact that Mortimer separated the Queen's head from her body and let it float above it. As well as Queen Elizabeth, he has depicted other famous people, including the playwright and Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter, the prize-winning rower Sir Steve Redgrave and the singer David Bowie.
Mortimer's work has been featured in numerous exhibitions around the world. Recent ones include Justin Mortimer: Breed (2019) at London's Parafin Gallery, Of Refrains and Liminal Spaces (2021) at the Suprainfinit Gallery in Bucharest, and On the Wall (2022) at Milan's Building Gallery. Also in 2022, Justin's exhibition Kammer was held at the DSC Gallery in Prague, curated by Jane Neal, who also curated the exhibition New Positions in British Painting. Here Mortimer presented his latest work - dark existential themes, reflections on the figurative world in the current troubled situation. Such works can also be found in the Olomouc exhibition.
With his subjects, Mortimer takes on serious themes, not shying away from depictions of death, barbarism or war. He has been fascinated by these since childhood, when his father - a naval helicopter pilot - told him of his experiences. Both fascination and fear are reflected in his characters, whom he depicts burdened by extreme situations. He often envelops them in a luminous aura that seems to carry them through a portal to another world where one is not burdened by one's problems. The colours in Justin's paintings blend and flow into each other, are very intense, often garish, phosphorescent, layered, scraped and reapplied many times over. He creates his scenes with a collage-like mixture of objects and figures. The objects tend to be in a destructive state - damaged dwellings, shreds of clothing... At the same time, the scenes are often shrouded in a dark smoke that adds to the sense of heaviness. Mortimer thus transports the observers of his scenes, along with his figures, into dark and psychologically tense situations. He then assumes the desire to pass also into a world where nothing will weigh him down. In his works, Justin Mortimer raises questions about the relationship between figuration and abstraction, beauty and horror, form and content, all the while teetering on the borderline, in a kind of deliberate disjointedness.
Seven untitled works from recent years of work have been selected for the exhibition at the Telegraph, forming a compact whole in their subject matter and atmosphere. In all the works we find the aforementioned manifestation that the artist has used in his work in recent years. A dark atmosphere, a certain degree of abstraction, a background against which colours blend into one another, as well as a toxic phosphorescent green, disturbed space, figures whose limbs are dislocated, reality shattered into fragments, intimacy exposed and disturbed. The distorted world as Mortimer presents it here is a reflection of a state of unease, and is perceived by the observer as unstable and unclear, as enveloped in an impenetrable fog that pulls him down but by which he is increasingly intoxicated.
By Barbora Langová / Telegraph Gallery
