ICONOCLASTS:ART OUT OF THE MAINSTREAMTeacher Resource

- Introduction

- Overview: Iconoclasts

- Exhibition floorplan

- Room by room guide

- Talking Points

- Practical Activities

- Glossary of terms

Introduction to the Gallery

The Saatchi Gallery is a contemporary art gallery –

artworks displayed are made by artists living and working

today.

These artworks are at the cutting edge of contemporary

art.

Many of the exhibited artists have never previously shown

in the UK. They may be unknown when first exhibited, not

only to the general public but also to the commercial art

world.

These artists are subsequently offered shows by galleries

and museums internationally. In this effect, the gallery

operates as a springboard for young artists to launch their

careers.

The Gallery presents 3-4 new exhibitions per year.

Overview of the Exhibition: Iconoclasts

Traditionally, Iconoclasm is the

deliberate destruction within a

culture of the culture's

own religious icons and other

symbols or monuments, usually

for religious or political motives.

People who engage in or support

Iconoclasm are called

Iconoclasts.

Iconoclasm is Greek for “breaker of icons”. In the

Byzantine Empire in the 8th and 9th century AD,

Iconoclasts were the image-breakers who refused to

adore the icons of saints and the Virgin Mary.

Over time, Iconoclasm has also come to refer to

aggressive statements or actions against any well-

established status quo. It has been used across every

medium, from journalism to advertisement.

In the art world, there is a history

of Iconoclasm motivated by the

aesthetics or appearance of an

artwork, manifesting itself by

attacks on art by individuals.

For some contemporary artists,

ideas of destruction and change

have become forms of creation.

• Iconoclasts: Art Out of the Mainstream explores the experimental, and often transformational, practices of a small

group of ground-breaking artists.

• The exhibition contains a myriad of unusual image-making practices – from branding imagery onto human skin

and sculpting using crow feathers to embroidering onto vintage photographs.

• We know that historically, Iconoclasts were ‘image breakers’. However, modern culture has turned art and

iconoclasm into mainstream practices, eroding the radicalism of the concept. Thus, this exhibition asks us to

engage with what modern day iconoclasm might be.

• The thirteen contemporary artists in this exhibition explore ideas and themes of contemporary iconoclasm. Not

only do they appropriate past images and modify or alter them in new ways, they question the intrinsic nature of

iconoclasm itself, by asking what defines a work of art.

• Other than their shared iconoclastic urge, there is no overarching theme bringing these artists together, although

parallels can be drawn between many of their practices.

• Not only do a high number of materials and techniques cohabit in one exhibition, but also diverse genres,

including abstraction, figuration, creation and deconstruction.

Overview of the Exhibition: Iconoclasts

GROUND FLOOR

G1: Josh Faught

G2: Thomas Maileander

G3: Makiko Kudo

G4: Maurizio Anzeri

G5: Danny Fox

FIRST FLOOR

G6: Matthew Chambers, Aaron Fowler, Renee So *

G7: Daniel Crews-Chubb *

G8: Dale Lewis *

G10: Sculptures by Kate MccGwire , Douglas White and

Alexi Williams Wynn

* These galleries contain artwork that may not be appropriate to under 16’s, please check on website prior to your visit.

Gallery 1 - Josh Faught

• Gallery 1 shows five large-scale, embroidered works by American artist Josh Faught.

• Faught combines textiles, collage, painting and sculpture to create tapestries that in his words

“address the relationships between language, community, and constructions of identity”.

• He uses found and everyday objects, highlighting the connections and disconnections between

materials and things.

• The employment of traditional craft techniques like crochet, loom weaving and ikat, is applied to

reference the queer and feminist deployment of traditionally domestic crafts during the 70's and

after.

• His work often features political slogans and kitsch references.

• Through his work, Faught attempts to explore the construction of queer identity and

investigates relationships relating to desire, domestic dysfunction, and sexual difference.

• Some of the materials and objects used in his work: hand-dyed, handwoven and crocheted

hemp; wool; cochineal (ground up insects); indigo; silver lamé yarn; plastic pretzels; spilled nail

polish; rubber nachos; plastic chocolate chip cookies; toilet paper; rubber onion rings; pins and

greeting cards.

Untitled (I), From Be Bold For What You Stand

For, Be Careful What You Fall For 2013

(detail).“I’m always asking myself how we can say something urgently through the slowest

means possible.”

Born 1979, Missouri, USA

Gallery 2 - Thomas Mailaender

• Gallery 2 shows nine works by Thomas Mailaender, a French multimedia artist, who is an

obsessive collector of old photographs. He focuses on the source material and its subjects,

appropriating and diverting images he finds on the internet, in car boot sales and in charity

shops.

• This room includes five blue toned pieces and four works from his series Illustrated People.

• For his Illustrated People series, he uses a unique process of applying negatives onto the

skin of unknown individuals, before projecting a powerful UV lamp over them. The physical

process of transferring the photo negative onto skin results in a sunburnt effect on the body,

which naturally dissipates as it is exposed to daylight.

• The result reveals a fleeting picture on the skin’s surface, which he photographs just

moments before they disappear.

• He uses negatives from the Archive of Modern Conflict, an organisation and publisher based

in London which maintains an archive of material relating to the history of war. The archive

primarily contains photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries, and both professional and

amateur.

• The effect of brandishing unknown people with images of past conflicts What new meaning

does the image take on when burnt into the flesh?

Thomas Mailaender, Illustrated People #22, 2014, lambda

print on paper

Born 1979, Marseille, France

“These (found) pictures are underrated in the history of photography, so

through my work I want to give them more space”.

Gallery 3 - Makiko Kudo

• Gallery 3 presents six large-scale, oil on canvas works by Japanese Artist Makiko Kudo.

• Her works are created using a combination of both everyday encounters and the dream-like world of her imagination. They

appear to hang in a liminal space between the real and the imaginative.

• Her dynamic yet detailed brushstrokes of vivid colour produce a chaotic liveliness. Perspective is played with and worlds-within-worlds appear.

• Many of her works allude to Monet’s water lilies or Matisse’s bold fauvist phase.

• Kudo’s work is reminiscent of traditional Japanese Prints, as

well as Manga comics. There is almost always a protagonist,

often a young girl, navigating her way through the myriad of

dreams, emotions and textures.

• These solitary figures seem to be seeking a return to

innocence.

Makiko Kudo, Stage Curtain, 2010, oil on canvas

Born in 1978, Aomori Prefecture, Japan

“I feel like a kind of ghost in a thin and flimsy world, because I

lack a sense of volume and reality. I sense reality more in my

dreams. Constructing a painting is similar to dreaming. Shuffling

different landscapes, creating stories and connecting them with

emotion and imagination, like a collage or a jigsaw puzzle”.

Gallery 4 - Maurizio Anzeri

• Gallery 4 displays small embroidered artworks by Italian artist Maurizio Anzeri.

• Anzeri creates his portraits by sewing directly onto found vintage photographs.

• His embroidered patterns garnish the figures like elaborate costumes, but also suggest

a psychological aura – perhaps they are revealing the person’s thoughts or feelings.

• The concept of photography fascinates Anzeri, in the sense of a fragment of reality

entrapped within a mere piece of paper.

• His ‘defacing’ or ‘enhancing’ of the original photographs affords them a three-

dimensional quality, creating photo-sculptures, a term invented by the artist himself.

• The work Enrico, 2014 contains a colourful egg shape covering a young boy’s face. At

first comical and jovial, we then spot an eye peering through a gap in the embroidery –

Enrico can see us, but we cannot see him, creating a more sinister narrative.

Maurizio Anerzi, Enrico, 2014, embroidery on

photograph

Born in 1969, Loano, Italy

“I come from three generations of fishermen and have seen men using threads

and needles all my life. As a kid I used to spend so much time looking at them

repairing and fixing fishing nets on the sea front. Those rituals and meticulous

gestures are deeply ingrained in my mind and imagination. For me, embroidery

represents a different way of drawing: with threads rather than pencils.”

Gallery 5 - Danny Fox

• Displayed in Gallery 5 are six works by British artist Danny Fox.

• A self-taught artist, his naïve style nods to Basquiat, Gaugin and

Picasso at times, with a distinct desire to shock.

• Fox’s Cornish ancestry is clear in his work, most obviously in the

parallels between his oil paintings and the naïve work of 19th Century

fisherman-painter Alfred Wallis, who also lived for a time in St Ives.

• Childlike in style, his work blends ideas of the real and the imagined.

The horse, myth, magic realism, urban sleaze, colonialism and class

are some of the subjects that interest Fox.

• The majority of his work is inspired by the people and situations

happening on the street outside. His colour palette changes in relation

to his environment, whether he is based in L.A. or London, or on

holiday in Cuba.

Danny Fox, Planned Parenthood Waiting Room, 2017, acrylic on canvas

Born in 1986, St Ives, UK

“Historical paintings are fun to do. I haven't done that many

that are actually based on a historical event. Most are more

mythological, or re-imagined to the point where they are not

recognisable”

Gallery 6 - Matthew Chambers*

• Gallery 6 displays works by three artists: Matthew

Chambers, Aaron Fowler and Renee So. Some of the

artworks in this room may not be suitable for younger

students.

• Matthew Chambers’ often colourful and bold works

explore the act of painting itself as well as the boundary

between abstraction and figuration.

• With active, emotive brushstrokes, Chambers paints

descriptive images inspired by pop culture, movies, art

history and his own imagination.

• His ‘slash paintings’ are composed of ribbons cut from

his own pre-existing paintings, demonstrating a punk,

self referential iconoclasm. This composition,

decomposition and re-composition reconfigures the

traditional ‘oil on canvas’ painting.

Matthew Chambers, A Utility of Immense details,

2010, oil and acrylic on canvas

Born 1982, Idaho, USA

“I didn’t want to make paintings, as much as I

wanted to work for them. Boss-employee,

submissive to the wants of the canvas”. Matthew Chambers, Not for the Purpose of

Restoring the Tower, 2010, oil and acrylic on

canvas

Gallery 6 - Aaron Fowler *

• Fowler’s densely packed, action-packed figurative

surfaces are almost Matisse like in their flat decorative

treatment of space, but unlike Matisse’s peaceful

interiors they are full of often violent movement.

• His starting point is often one of his own photographs,

which captures a moment or episode in his life.

• The dynamic between the group and the individual is

important in his work.

• Aaron Fowler incorporates three-dimensional objects

into his elaborately collaged works, constructed from

various pieces of furniture and crude objects sourced

from his local surroundings.

• Each piece has a narrative forged from events of his

own personal history. These horrific personal

experiences of violence, such as cousins incarcerated

and friends gunned down, provoked Fowler to become

an artist.

Aaron Fowler, Untitled (Footlocker), 2013, mixed media on panel

Born 1988, St Louis, USA

“As a young Black man who has grown up in the lower class, I have

seen and witnessed too much violence, poverty and corruption. All my

life I’ve been surrounded by the horrors of gang violence, under-

funded public school institutions, racial discrimination, and I have

been met with institutional indifference. This is why I became an artist.

These issues started to define my life and art gave me the opportunity

to redefine it”.

Gallery 6 - Renee So

• Renee So’s work creates links between iconographies, cultures,

illustration, graphic design, textiles, ancient civilisations, painting and

sculpture.

• Her knitted pictures are inspired by medieval wall tapestries. She uses a

knitting technique called intarsia.

• The imagery and figure are reductive and simple, as a result of the

knitting process. There is a cartoonish quality to these pieces – outlined

in black and filled in with flat blocks of colour.

• There is a central male character throughout her work. He is imaginary

and is often accompanied by an array of props – beards, wigs, top hats,

walking sticks, pipes, cigars and glasses of wine.

• The male character has a distinctive double head with two faces that can

be turned upside-down. This recurring motif at times transforms into

objects such as boots or jugs.

Renee So, Promenading, 2010, wool, tray, frame

Born 1974, Hong Kong

“The craft element of my work is integral and inherent in everything I make,

it informs my choice of materials which also determines what I can and

cannot do with these materials. I try to build on that to create something

personal and unique to me”.

Gallery 7- Daniel Crews-Chubb

• Gallery 7 shows seven large works by British artist Daniel Crews-

Chubb.

• Crews-Chubb’s practice consists of paintings on canvas and

paper. His intimate figures are influenced by primitive art and

culture, as well as pornographic imagery found online.

• He uses a variety of materials and methods, such as collage and

spray paint.

• He employs a traditional, expressionistic, painterly language that

wrestles with his primary influences of primitive art, ancient rituals

and amateur anthropology.

• Focusing primarily on the nude, Crews-Chubb uses historical

parallels to explore both abstract and figurative mark-making. His

bold and vibrant works employ a traditional, expressionistic

language, which wrestles with his primary influences of tribal art,

ancient rituals, social media and amateur anthropology.

Daniel Crews-Chubb, Rituals with cactus (red), 2017, oil, acrylic, spray paint and charcoal

on collaged canvas

Born 1984, Northampton, UK

“I’m like a sponge taking in everything I love about painting and feeding it into my work. It’s obvious that I am fascinated by the

nude and its place in art history. Picasso, Baseltiz, Jorn and De Kooning are all major influences, but in the end, the female

form has been a conduit or enabler for playing with abstract mark-making and paint”.

Gallery 8 - Dale Lewis *

• Gallery 8 displays five monumental works by British artist

Dale Lewis.

• Lewis’s work features a choreography of figures on large-

scale formats which refer to mythology, modernist

iconography, as well as contemporary life.

• Using sweeping yet controlled brushstrokes, he creates

large-scale frieze-like compositions of elongated figures

inspired by British working-class male life.

• Lewis uses a combination of oil, acrylic and spray-paint.

The overlapping and intertwining figures take up a large

proportion of the canvas in order to confront the viewer.

• Lewis feels his work is representative of his position as a

white, gay male of working-class upbringing. His work also

possesses a sense of satirical and good-natured humour,

which at times can be dark and absurd.

Dale Lewis, Olympians, 2015, oil, acrylic, spray paint on canvas

Born 1980, Essex, UK

“The figurative, mural-scale works are explicitly

influenced by the symbolic conventions and

compositional drama of Medieval and Renaissance

painting, wherein the composition is dominated by the

intertwining of bodies and punctuated by emblematic

tokens of sin, virtue and status. This is combined with

personal encounters and an acute eye for the everyday

human dramas that play out in the urban environments Ifrequent…”

Gallery 10 – Douglas White

• Gallery 10 consists of sculptures by Douglas White, Kate MccGwire and Alexi

Williams Wynn.

• Douglas White’s work invites us to look for human presence in installations where

no such intervention is to be seen.

• White is interested in the transformative potential of seemingly mundane, discarded

or overlooked objects and materials. Ideas of change, growth and decay are

prominent in his work.

• New Skin for Old Ceremony, 2011, was inspired by an elephant carcass which he

saw in East Africa in 2001. Most of the carcass had been scavenged so there was

very little left. The scattered arrangement of bones and its draped, deflated skin

reminded him of a collapsed tent.

• The large ‘skins’ are made in wet clay and transported to the gallery, then hoisted

up and lowered over wooden armatures to create the final work. As the show

progresses they will transform and mutate as the clay dries and hardens, echoing a

bodily transformation.

Douglas White’s photograph from 2001 (top) which inspired

New Skin for Old Ceremony, 2011, clay and steel table

(bottom).

Born 1977, Guildford, UK

“Many years later as I worked a rolled-out slab of clay it begun to crease and

crack and it became, in my mind’s eye, that elephant’s skin. After so long I felt, at

least in part, able to recuperate something of this strange, lost encounter and of

the unreasoned desire for this abject form.”

Gallery 10- Kate MccGwire

• Kate MccGwire’s sculpture titled Corvid, 2011, is a serpentine form made of

crow’s feathers.

• MccGwire was born and raised in rural Norfolk. During this time, she

developed a deep connection with the natural world and a particular

fascination with birds and animals in flight.

• She collects different varieties of real bird feathers. She has a network of

around 150 pigeon racers, farmers and gamekeepers who send her feathers

in the post. She uses thousands of them to construct large, knotted, snake-

like forms.

• Although these works may be considered abstract. Their structures are

organic, and follow the lines of the human body.

• In folklore, the crow is associated with thieving and deviant behaviour – a

wicked kind of beauty. The artist wanted to create a form which appeared

muscular and tensile, as if it has the power to restrain. Like the pattern of our

thoughts, it turns endlessly in on itself, without beginning or end, or any

obvious resolution.

Kate MccGwire, Corvid, 2011, crows’ feathers and mixed media

Born 1964, Norwich, UK

“I’m constantly trying to create this fine

line between desire and disquiet; the

forms are bodily, so we recognise the

creases and crevices, yet they are also

alien and strange. The work uses natural

patterns to suggest familiarity and truth,

but they are impossible creatures”.

Gallery 10 - Alexi Williams Wynn

• Alexi Williams Wynn, Echoes of the Kill, 2015 (Wax, wood and steel)

• Williams-Wynn grew up in rural Wales and brings her childhood

experiences to her work by attempting to disrupt our conventional

perceptions of natural beauty. She is intrigued by the way in which humans

understand and process the world.

• She uses a mixture of manmade and natural materials such as wood, steel,

and wax to create installations that seduce the eye with their sensuality, yet

confuse by their ambiguity. Williams-Wynn organises and manufactures

these materials to generate installations that, at first, appear to be part of

the natural world, but are in fact completely of her own design.

• The work emerging from this process blurs the boundaries between the real

and the surreal, overturning and questioning our notions of beauty.

Alexi Williams Wynn, Echoes of the Kill, 2015, wax, wood and steel

Born 1972, Wrexham, UK

“I have had a long fasciation with the dialectic between beauty and the abject.

As a young child in rural Wales I remember being struck by the sight of a dead

stag, hanging from a beam. My aim is to challenge our disconnect from the

natural world. Casting directly from animal organs, I abstract the flesh in an

attempt to find a new language with which to perceive the body”.

Iconoclastic Talking Points

What has Iconoclasm meant in the past?

What does it mean in today’s society?

What historical images/ideas have the artists adopted in this exhibition?

What thoughts are provoked by the original images?

In what ways have these images and ideas been altered by the artists?

What has been added or taken away?

What is the effect of these alterations?

Do you think this opens up a dialogue with artists of the past?

Do any of the works share iconoclastic urges?

Are there common cultural or social factors that the works were borne out of?

Do you think these artists are ‘out of the mainstream?’

What qualities afford them this title?

Artists by Theme

Craft

Josh Faught

Maurizio Anzeri

Renee So

Collage/ mixed media

Matthew Chambers (Slash Paintings)

Aaron Fowler

Josh Faught

Renee So

Figuration

Thomas Mailaender

Maurizio Anzeri

Aaron Fowler

Daniel Crews-Chubb

Dale Lewis

Kate MccQuire

Photography

Thomas Mailaender

Maurizio Anzeri

Aaron fowler

Sculpture / installation

Douglas White

Kate MccGwire

Alexi Williams Wynn

Josh Faught

These themes have been selected with the curriculum in mind, following topics chosen by various exam boards.

Using/ recycling found objects/ artefacts

Josh Faught

Thomas Mailaender

Maurizio Anzeri

Kate MccGwire

Aaron Fowler

Society/ class/ race/ politics

Aaron Fowler

Dale Lewis

Josh Faught

Danny Fox

Biomorphic forms / the human condition

Kate MccGwire

Douglas White

Daniel Crews-Chubb

Fantastical/ the absurd/ dreamlike

Makiko Kudo

Maurizio Anzeri

Danny Fox

Renee So

Conflict/ Death

Aaron Fowler

Dale Lewis

Douglas White

Thomas Mailaender

ActivitiesThe activities on the following pages have been designed in line with curriculum aims. Activities can be adapted to suit different age groups and learning

abilities. It is indicated if the activity is to be used in the gallery or in school.

Meeting the artist

In-gallery

A useful activity when visiting any

exhibition is to split the group into

smaller groups and ask them to

devise a set of questions that they

would like to ask the artist. After a

given time, ask the groups to swap

questions and work together to come

up with the answers.

Observing gallery visitors

In-gallery

Ask students to subtly choose another visitor

in the gallery and make a drawing whilst

observing their movements. Students spend 5

minutes drawing their chosen visitor’s

movements as a line, ensuring the line

remains continuous.

When completed, students can draw over the

pencil lines with a marker pen and then cut

out the shape that the journey made. This is a

visual record of one person’s experience of

the Iconoclast exhibition. Assemble all of the

different shapes together on the gallery floor.

Questions:

- Are there any similarities between the

drawings?

- Do people behave in similar ways to each

other in an art gallery?

Listen & learn

In-gallery

Ask students to choose an artwork and then use the

voice recorder on their phones to answer the following

questions (without saying the name of the artist or the

title):

- How does this artwork make you feel?

- What do you think it is about?

- Is it a popular artwork? How are other people

interacting with it?

Students should then swap phones and listen to the

recording, to guess which artwork their friend is talking

about.

Compare and ContrastIn-gallery / in-school

Students Visit Gallery 10 and look at the

sculptures by Kate MccGwire, Douglas

White and Alexi Williams Wynn.

Ask students to compare and contrast the

three works focussing on….

Material

Effect

Size

Subject

Feedback to the rest of the group.

Descriptive Task

In-gallery

In pairs, sit back to back with one person

facing an artwork of their choice. The

other person should not be able to see

the artwork. The person facing the

artwork should describe it in as much

detail as possible to the other person,

who will be drawing what they hear in

their sketchbook.

Allow 10 minutes and then swap.

Feedback as a group on how they found

the exercise.

- Was it easier or harder than they

thought it would be?

- What were more important- drawing

skills or communication skills?

- Did it allow students to look at the

artwork in more detail? Would they

have normally spent this long studying

it?

Making links

In-gallery

Ask students to choose an artwork. Does the work

relate to any other areas of knowledge, such as

Science, Geography or History? Can they link it to

any other arts, such as film, music or literature?

Discussion of terms

In-gallery / in-school

Discuss the meaning of the following terms:

Iconoclasm / mainstream / appropriation

The activities on the following pages have been designed in line with curriculum aims. Activities can be adapted to suit different age groups and learning

abilities. It is indicated if the activity is to be used in the gallery or in school.

Activities

Glossary of termsIconoclasm: Historically: A supporter of the 8th- and 9th-century

movement in the Byzantine Church which sought to abolish the veneration

of icons and other religious images.

In contemporary society: the action of attacking or assertively rejecting

cherished beliefs and institutions or established values and practices.

Mainstream: The ideas, attitudes, or activities that are shared by most

people and regarded as normal or conventional.

Appropriation: The deliberate reworking of images and styles from

earlier, well-known works of art.

Crochet: A handicraft in which yarn is made up into a textured fabric by

means of a hooked needle.

Loom weaving: Making fabric by weaving yarn or thread.

iKat: Fabric made using an Indonesian decorative technique in which

warp or weft threads, or both, are tie-dyed before weaving.

Feminist art: Art which supports the feminist cause (The advocacy of

women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes).

Queer art: Art which supports homosexual rights and equality amongst all

people regardless of their sexuality.

Kitsch: Art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of

excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an

ironic or knowing way.

Abstraction: Art that does not attempt to represent external reality,

but seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colours, and

textures.

Figuration: Art that is clearly derived from real object sources, and

is therefore by definition representational.

Expressionistic: An artist who seeks to express themselves through

the inner world of emotion rather than external reality.

Anthropology: The study of human societies and cultures and their

development.

Frieze: A broad horizontal band of sculpted or painted decoration,

especially on a wall near the ceiling

Reminiscent: Tending to remind one of something.

Parody: An imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre

with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect

Underbelly of society: a vulnerable area and also a corrupt or

sordid part.

Memento Mori: An object kept as a reminder of the inevitability of

death, such as a skull.

Conventional: following traditional forms and genres.

Source: The Oxford English Dictionary