STREET LIGHTS II

https://www.lesliefarago.co.uk/recent

The exhibition title 'Street Lights II' refers to recognisable and plentiful lamp posts that vertically cut through the urban grey cityscape and mysteriously glow tungsten yellow at night. Light-Dark-Light-Dark-Light-Dark; A vehicular journey that is taken at night is more dramatic and playful. My work celebrates mistakes, accidents; unloved surfaces and structures that, in my mind, lay forgotten. Growing up in London in the 1980s and 90s, I have always found beauty in the places in-between origin and destination, and over the past fifteen years have recreated the journeys I would make as a child in the car on foot.  My fascination with how the look and function of places change over time has led me to re-explore and re-record. 

The font used to promote 'Street Lights II' is a transcription of the popular arcade and computer game from the early 1990s 'Street Fighter II'. The game depicted a dystopian world where individual characters, displaying distinctive characteristics and strengths, fought like-minded renegades on streets around the globe. The glamour of fantasy and fiction is something that interests me when I am painting.  Referencing material things I valued during childhood such as collections of computer games magazines, trainers and music helps place my work within a specific period of time. This stuff I once cherished, merged with my meandering, that influences the colours, shapes and marks within my paintings. The layering of spray paint, crayons, oils and acrylics combined with old works on paper create rich surfaces that have been assembled over time. Contrasting the greys, blues, browns and ochres of the concrete jungle with traces of luminous hues that often flash up whilst on a journey creates a focus within each composition.

Certain recognisable structures such as lampposts appear in the foreground of some works offering a vertical reference point against the grid like backdrop. The lack of perspective within these paintings suggestive of landscapes sums up the collapsing of time between my past and my present. Spending the last fifteen years investigating the previous fifteen years of my life has led me to create flashbacks to better memories. Preserve and cherish the forgotten.