Adventures in Advertising with Jack Bishop at Kentville’s Hardware Gallery

Adventures in Advertising with Jack Bishop at Kentville’s Hardware Gallery
Submitted

Artist Jack Bishop delivers up his new show Adventures in Advertising at Kentville’s Hardware Gallery from January 8 to February 10, 2019.

Jack Bishop is originally from Quispamsis, NB. He received a BFA from NSCAD University in Halifax in 2007 with a minor in drawing. Returning to NB after graduating, he worked in a studio in Nauwigewauk for several years, during which time he was awarded the Arts NB Emerging Artist of the Year.

The theme for Jack’s show at The Hardware Gallery is Adventures in Advertising. “For the last 13 years, the subject matter in my paintings has explored car-culture, consumerism, and urban sprawl,” Jack says. “I’ve made series of work with cars in parking lots, shoppers pushing carts through grocery store checkouts, and gridded collaged landscapes of real estate magazines. My current paintings revisit the idea of Canadian landscape in terms not of natural but of commercial space, where ubiquitous retail outlets dictate use of the land and proclaim its occupation. I like the idea of subverting the romanticized untouched Canadian environment, iconized in art history in such celebrated work as the Group of Seven. Over the time of working with these themes I’ve become fascinated with presenting advertisements within my paintings. Commercialism and advertising is so mainstream that we are desensitized to it, but under the frame of landscape painting something changes, and we’re left to question intention. For this exhibition, I decided to take the opportunity to curate a show of work focusing on billboards and tractor-trailer ads. The paintings shown are a range of work and I believe show a breadth of approaches to my process. I want my paintings to represent a sense of excess and consumption while remaining open to interpretation; ranging from romantic, folksy, or humorous to politically-charged with appropriation and environmental impact.”

Jack shows his paintings regularly between NB and NS. His work is in numerous public and private collections across Canada, including The NB Art Bank, The NS Art Bank, The Canada Council Art Bank, The Department of Foreign Affairs, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, TD Bank, McCain, and Stewart McKelvey Law Firm. Jack now lives in Halifax with his wife Jamie and their dog Ted (jackbishop.tumblr.com Instagram @j.bish).