Gallery: Paintings and Politics
Painting and Politics introduces projects by Nick Knight that challenge socially accepted ideas and the quintessential values of the notion of 'beauty'. Regarding fashion as an art form most deeply ingrained and most influential to everyday life, Nick Knight used his campaigns to deliver provocative messages upon social issues normally sidelined or seen as taboo, such as physical disability, discrimination, violence and death. Moreover, from the early nineties, a time when digital photo manipulation was still a rarity, he maximised the expressive potential of his images by working on the Quantel Paintbox* and other groundbreaking graphic devices at the time.
Editor's note on Skinned Monkey, 1997:
The ape photographed was from a zoo and died of natural causes, sourced through a taxidermist.
Painting and Politics introduces projects by Nick Knight that challenge socially accepted ideas and the quintessential values of the notion of 'beauty'. Regarding fashion as an art form most deeply ingrained and most influential to everyday life, Nick Knight used his campaigns to deliver provocative messages upon social issues normally sidelined or seen as taboo, such as physical disability, discrimination, violence and death. Moreover, from the early nineties, a time when digital photo manipulation was still a rarity, he maximised the expressive potential of his images by working on the Quantel Paintbox* and other groundbreaking graphic devices at the time.