The exhibition includes prints, drawings, sketchbooks, appropriated comic strips and photographs, which weave common motifs and effects such as empty landscapes, political monuments and theatrical explosions into ambiguous narratives of social panic, geopolitical apocalypse and natural disasters.

In the continuing series, Comic on Terror, Footitt has assembled found comic book frames, each taken from a separate source. The original narrative sequence and the interrelationship between one frame and its abutting partner are lost. Each frame highlights a moment before the occurrence of an unknown catastrophe, perhaps nuclear annihilation, global or national invasion, political strife or revolution. While the proximate cause of panic or fear has been severed from the narrative, the characters, through either their thoughts or speech, reveal a sense of dread or suspicion, and the viewer is left with only with their nascent effect.

Similarly, in Natural Disaster Tag, Park Before and Park After, drawings and appropriated photographs of explosions highlight the repetitive use of special effects in blockbuster films in which such effects act as the plot themselves. By omitting much of the actual narrative and isolating the effect, Footitt distances the viewer from any visual suspense or shock.

Other works in the exhibition show characters from disaster and revenge films and political thrillers in wry and unexpected ways. In Kong Stones, a large wall drawing, finely drawn brush marks depict a striated mountainous surface. Viewed horizontally, the shape is actually that of King Kong. More explicitly in Bronson Saves, a small image of the iconic actor is emblazoned on the stars-and-stripes background of the National Rifle Association. Although the actor looms large in film roles as avenger and saviour, here, downgraded, downsized and placed among larger and more graphically charged images of towering mountain ranges and isolated homes, his iconic image signals the approach or possibility of disaster he is incapable of preventing.

Curated by Tim McDonnell and Wayne Northcross.

About the artist

Robin Footitt graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art, London in 2004. Since 2001 his work has been included in a number of group shows both in the UK and Germany. He has contributed to several publications including BlackBook and has recently been listed in the New Talent section of London arts magazine, Marmalade. This year he was awarded an internship at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. He currently resides in the South Bronx.

Project website

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