Mike Roles @ Broomhill
We have asked the artist to provide a statement about their work, an edited personal history, and a selection of exhibitions and commissions. The content here is entirely their words and selection. Works illustrated here have been chosen by the artist.
‘Welcome to the Third Millennium’
“Welcome to the Third Millennium” is an extraordinary, contemporary exhibition and one, which will have lasting resonance as the work challenges the viewer, reflecting the question of how each of us, as an individual, can take responsibility for the role we play in this great theatre.
Roles says that he has been able to produce this unique and uncompromising show through being offered a special freedom of artistic expression by Broomhill which has allowed him to expand his ideas into more of a site-specific installation than straightforward exhibition.
The Artist Speaks
“Welcome to the Third Millennium”
The coming of the third Millennium was much heralded by the media, politicians and others as a great new beginning, a new opportunity for change and for mankind to make the world a better and more peaceful place. The world did change, dramatically but not as predicted. Humanity appeared to suffer some kind of radical inversion and the hoped-for future evaporated into a vision of destruction, violence and a regrouping of ideologies, set against a background of a planet no longer able to support the life which inhabits it.
History demonstrates that basic human instincts change little over time. We are all prisoners of our genes and our genes selfishly want us to survive and procreate at all costs in order that they can survive, which in turn can mean exploiting, repressing or destroying others in order so to do.
This body work is a quest to reflect the world as I see it and an attempt to make some kind of personal sense of humanity's seeming obsession with self destruction and its ability to revert to the basest of it's instincts.
I see this installation as being, in some way, like a theatrical black comedy. The Court offers a defined stage-like space where the decaying, rusting figures interact and physically create a time/space relationships, be they philosopher or warrior, tormentor or tormented, lover or onlooker, they all bring into play their personal and universal histories, cultures and prejudices. All are implicated, both as victims and perpetrators, in the destruction of the civilised values they claim to support.
The action revolves around the almost poetic stillness of the figures which is ruptured by the actions of “The Dissident” who wants change and will not let things be. Is he a terrorist and a destroyer or the result of some kind of Darwinesque evolutionary force pushing humanity into tomorrow, whatever the cost? Welcome to the Third Millennium.
Mike Roles 2007
The exhibition is enhanced by a 40-page fully illustrated catalogue [8Mb PDF] which also includes writing from internationally renowned artist, author and curator Professor Deanna Petherbridge.
“My work, through a semi-autobiographical approach, is an attempt at making sense of my own humanity and mortality through my relationship with my past and with others and all the joys, pain, fears and anxieties that existence entails. Informed by existential, philosophical and literary sources, it is also intended to evoke a sense of reflection on the relationship between body and mind, time and decay, life and death.
“Much of my work reflects my interest in the interface between the physical qualities of 3D sculptural form and the illusory qualities of the photographic image, a subject which was central to my PhD research at the Royal College of Art.
“Over the last 15 years I have developed three main bodies of work tracing a transition from that which was essentially photographic into work which is totally sculptural in concept. These are:
Background
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD RCA) Sculpture Royal College of Art (1998)
- Master of Arts (MA RCA) Photography Royal College of Art (1983)
- Diploma in Photography (PQE) University of Westminster (1977)
- National Diploma in Design Painting St Martins School of Art (1966)
Mike is a partner in ARC Studios, London.
In the past he has been Head of Department at St Martin's School of Art London; Principal Lecturer at London College of Printing; Head of Department, West Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education; Visiting lecturer at The Royal College of Art and he lectures widely both in Britain and abroad.
Exhibitions
Work has been shown at over forty exhibitions of which nearly half have been solo.
Solo Exhibitions include:
- PhotoSculpture at Espace Guyot, Paris.
- Loves and Vanities at The Royal Photographic Society's National Centre for Photography, Bath. (A major national exhibition).
- Loves and Vanities at The Portfolio Gallery, London.
International Exhibitions include:
- The Rotterdam Bienale at the RAM Gallery, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
- Fotofeis: Scottish International Photographic Exhibition at the Aberdeen City Art Gallery.
Commissions
A number of both private and corporate commissions have been undertaken, the most recent being The Lloyd's Millennium ImageSculpture for Lloyd's of London. It is a piece 10m x 3m in Richard Rogers' Lloyd's Building in the City of London.
The works shown on this page are not necessarily on display at Broomhill.
