Richard Forster

Richard Forster’s work is strongly informed by social, cultural and art historical concerns and whilst impressively consistent, it adopts such different guises that on first encountering it one could be forgiven for taking the opposite view. Painstakingly detailed, almost photo-real pencil drawings made from snapshots, or pages torn from magazines that have particular resonance for him, co-exist with sculptural objects and installations which have been manufactured in glossy, artificially coloured and functional materials. Rather than seeing these drawings and objects as separate entities from different spheres, Forster uses each to inform the other, developing a new perspective on the challenges of appearance and reality. He enjoys materials and uses them to question our understanding of what we are looking at, so questioning both the thing itself and the image of the thing.

Recent exhibitions include Working Things Out at Spike Island Bristol in 2007; Seascapes at Ingleby Gallery in 2008; The Northern Art Prize at Leeds City Art Gallery in 2009 and Drawn from Photography, a group show at The Drawing Center in New York. Forster’s first major solo museum show, Fast and Slow Time opened at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art in July 2011 and is currently on show at The Flag Foundation, New York until 19 May 2012. Forster will take his place in a group show at the Tate, Slow Looking: contemporary drawing at the end of May 2012. He will have a solo exhibition at Ingleby Gallery in the Spring of 2014.