Photographs selected for the RCA Painting Collection /  by Augustine Carr

Delighted to have 'Things To Make' selected by the Royal College of Art Custodians for the RCA College Collection. Artist proofs of all three photographed paintings shown in the RCA Show of 2016 were selected by the RCA College Collection Custodians, with "Things To Make"  requested by the Dean of Fine Art, Juan Cruz. "The Royal College of Art College Collection is a collection of over 1000 works designed to represent significant developments in British painting by alumni and staff." These are the first photographs to be added to the Royal College of Art, Painting Collection.

Things To Make, archival digital C-type print an Hahnemuhle Pearl Rag in aluminium box. 110x135x5cm 2016

Things To Make, archival digital C-type print an Hahnemuhle Pearl Rag in aluminium box. 110x135x5cm 2016

Text for RCA SHOW /  by Augustine Carr

The work of Augustine Carr crosses several registers, combining painting, sculpture, print, photography, digital scanning and film.

An appropriated book cover is painted over, not so much defaced as embellished, and then it is scanned and printed at a much-enlarged scale. His work ‘Things to Make’ depicts a few trees painted in a free and simple manner. The book it is painted on, referred to in the title, is the classic book for children, and it underlines the childish nature of the painting. But there is more than just childish irreverence at play however, as the enlargement works to both distance us from the emotive painted book and to bring us closer to it through its enlargement. The device is both undone and magnified, as is the emotional intimacy.

His sculpture ‘Summa Theologica’ works in a similar way, but involves a small hand-modeled plasticine sculpture enlarged and reproduced by detailed CNC milling. Again, what appears as a small child-like sketch is enlarged and reproduced with a technical precision that it amplifies the haptic quality of the object and places it in a space of intimate virtuality.

Augustine Carr also makes films, involving his sculpture and shifts of scale. His ‘An Investment for Economy’ involves a hearse driving an enlarged life-size reproduction of a set of hand-modeled castle crenellations. The object and the performed action are doubly over-blown and yet with the distance of the film medium, the elegy to what might be an embattled childhood is given poignancy. 

Production still from "An Investment for Economy"

Production still from "An Investment for Economy"