Cover Versions By Roger Woodiwiss

Cover Versions began with my own album collection subsequently enhanced
with charity shop acquisitions and therefore by default tends to reflect my
own musical tastes. In reproduction the images are well on their way back to
becoming album covers. Beyond the self-evident neo-pop element to the work,
the pictures fall in the tradition of small, although not miniature, European
paintings.

The series to a degree monumentalises the album cover, therefore inevitably
in a sense, the LP itself; the fact that there is now a certain distance in time
from its period of market dominance, allows this to happen; in this sense it fits
with other parts of my work that seek to make something permanent from the
generally unconsidered products of the flow of contemporary imagery - a wish
to preserve the ephemeral, to pin it down. It is a celebration of the particularity

of the phenomenon and its time, so it also in a sense memorialises, 'makes a
record of', the covers, the designers and the people who made the music.

This memorial quality coupled with a restrained or sober painting technique
counters the sometimes lurid or brash character of the subject creating a
counterbalance to its inevitable Pop Art references. There are various ways
the paintings contradict the sleek photographic printed sheen of album covers;
the blocky stretchers give an object quality, the edges being considered part
of each painting; the use of a chunky loose weave canvas makes it difficult, a
struggle sometimes to render the smaller, more detailed elements especially
the typography; there is a conscious use of heavy body acrylic so that the brush
marks are evident and a physical textured surface built up.

Roger Woodiwiss
Artist

Roger Woodiwiss is an artist based in Bedford. He produces works in a variety of media;
painting, drawing, photography, digital print and text pieces. Not concerned with an
individual ‘signature style’ and questioning notions of authenticity, he likes to work with
readymade imagery often commonplace, sometimes banal. He is interested in making
single things from multiples and with reclaiming things from the past and re-making
them in the present. These diverse activities are brought together under the heading
of‘398 Productions Unlimited’. To see more of his work please visit his website at: http://
www.398productions.co.uk/ Tel: 07530611320. The paintings are for sale.

There is an interchange between art objects and the spaces in which they are
situated. The traditional white cube spaces of galleries and museums wear
a mantle of neutrality, disguising the fact that such sites are riddled through
with ideological associations and value laden assumptions; auras that confer
authority on the work itself. The presence of art objects outside of the white
cube reminds us that art exists in a variety of social contexts where it takes on
different meanings. I have chosen this setting because of its obvious connection
to the jazz world and its music. As a music art form that existed outside of
official culture and its sacred spaces: clubs; bars and pubs were natural settings
and these were not places imbued with cultural authority, but they were often
transgressive spaces. While the paintings evoke nostalgia they are not simply a
celebration of the past but inextricably bound to narratives about popular culture
and the social values of the time, production and consumption. In the same way
the album covers once brought artist, musician and music together, my aim is to
bring together the art, the space and the emotion of seeing them now.

Kathianne Hingwan
Curator

Kathianne Hingwan has been an interning at The Vortex Jazz Club and works part time
for Babel Label. Cover Versions is the first exhibition she has curated.