David Kenworthys Artists Statement

It is my intention to create a new kind of pop art experience inspired by discount stores and clearinghouses and our consumption of their cheap and mass-produced commodities.
My construction of a new experience for the viewer is based in pop art’s focus on the mass-produced and commercially available object; the compulsive attraction and instant gratification it can offer. Shopping in these kinds of stores allow us to escape the complicated responsibilities and mundane aspects of modern life and revisit our childhoods as we ‘get off’ again and again on the hunt for a bargain, the discovery of a new toy, or the intense sugar rush unique to cut-price candy.

I have chosen to employ both found object artworks like children’s toys and hand crafted sculptures - with geometric surfaces covered in confectionery - to create this new experience. Both types of artwork are illuminated from within with fluorescent or LED light. When seen in a darkened environment each artwork will radiate its own uniquely coloured light, which shines with such a vivid intensity that each artwork is surrounded by a stunning fluorescent coloured halo. These mundane urban commodities have now been transformed into jewel-like relics of lost childhood that create an immediate, playful, vibrant and uncomplicated stimulation of the visual senses.

I’ve always responded to images that the artist Howard Arkley created of Australian suburbia and how he treated blandly coloured structures with generous patterning and stenciling and bold panels of luminous colour. Artist Dan Flavin has also been a major influence in the way he uses simple fluorescent light fittings and coloured tubes to create the most wonderful day-glo coloured light installations. Rather than using fluorescent light fittings with different coloured tubes to create light, I have chosen to use plastic toys, bric a brac and translucent confectionery to achieve the same end. And rather than creating images of Australia suburbia, I am entering suburbia directly to illuminate its indoor and outdoor environments with these new artworks.