| John Stezaker is fascinated by the power of images | | | | This fascination is translated into alterations, deletions, |
| and questions the authority of pictures found in books, | | | | visual concordances and juxtapositions of disparate |
| magazines, postcards and encyclopaedias by directly | | | | sources, intuitively creating new images, relationships, |
| intervening into their ordinary status. Through the | | | | characters and meanings. Stezaker's investigations |
| handcrafted act of splicing together, inverting, or simply | | | | continue to develop in this exhibition of new works that |
| adjusting an image Stezaker embarks upon 'a process | | | | concentrate specifically on the portrait. In the 'Love' |
| that cuts it off from its disappearance into the | | | | series, subtle but masterful alterations to found original |
| everyday world'. | | | | film star portraits shift and magnify emotion and |
| Stezaker has been centrally influential in a number of | | | | expression that had before only been implied, |
| developments in art over the last three decades; from | | | | sometimes imperceptibly, in the original image. The |
| Conceptual Art, New Image Art through to the | | | | glamorous and carefully posed faces are subtly |
| contemporary interest in collage. Showing first as a | | | | transformed into otherworldly, uncanny beings.Playing |
| part of the British Conceptual Art group in 'The New | | | | with ideas of cubism and caricature, Stezaker's series |
| Art', 1972 (the first Hayward Annual), Stezaker's | | | | of black and white portraits fuse male and female |
| interest in the concept soon gave way to a long-term | | | | faces, reflecting the idea of marriage and hybrid |
| fascination with the image, finding new aesthetic | | | | symmetry, but also a discord of union. Perhaps the |
| allegiances with the image through working with found | | | | most subtle of found image alterations are the |
| photographs and printed matter. | | | | 'Reclined' series;what to Do Next... |