Expressways

Expressways is a working title for a series of digital collages. These collaborative 'mash-ups', based on magazine and online advertisements for automobiles - with the cars removed - came about almost accidentally. The original source was a file folder with blurred jpgs and scans of roadscapes, from which I derived imagery, intermittently, for an ongoing cycle of paintings. The paintings addressed speed, travel, the landscape, as experienced by drivers or passengers, and consumer culture in the automotive age.
Intrigued by the altered photographs, I emailed a number of these 'emptied out' car ads to my friend, Jack Niven, an artist active in New Orleans. Niven digitally filled the rectangular voids in the pictures with.....peas, frog eggs, the Huey P. Long Bridge, lumber - anything that struck him as compelling or absurd. A flurry of enthusiastic correspondence followed, resulting in a project that could be published as 'hard copy'; A mock up of salesroom floor marketing in the style of automotive print advertising.


Here are examples of the 'gutted' pictures before being manipulated:

                                          Here are examples of  J. Niven's alterations:

  

The Secret Life of Camrose: City of Whispers

  An innocent "purple martin house'? Think again......

                       

The mysterious Founders Hall on the Augustana University campus

       Listen...........

                                                   

           Rituals occur here

                                                   

           Shhh! Blood bath!

                                                      

A change in the weather

Rumour has it that victims are buried under the front porch of this home.

Speculation persists that children are buried beneath these leaves.

         And under this old tree

                                                    

                  Don't be lulled into complacency

                                      

   There are signs

                                               

                                              

Body parts are found, mangled, in appliances throughout the Camrose region. 

Nobody says too much about it.

                      Lumpen, grotesque scarecrows await helpless, elderly and infirm victims.

Any attempt at escape is futile.

                                             . 

The festive atmosphere is a cover-up.

                                                  

       Not Just Hats

                                                            

  Look away!

                                                                  

Obey

                                                                     

The Bailey Theatre, where hideously malformed children watch matinees

 

The crematorium and its broadcasting equipment

                                          

   Industrial ventilation? Or poison gas dispersal units?

                                   

Ken works here, late at night

                                            

Ken builds coffins for the burgeoning memorial home service industry in Camrose

                    

Climate Master

                                                                  

Blood has been seen pouring from this building, late at night.

                                  

   Killer microwaves emanate from this tower.

                                   

Organs and other body parts are disposed of in this receptacle

                               

This chair is used during limb removal ceremonies during the annual Vital Organ Festival

 

The mangled bodies of hideously malformed children and gnarled, twisted old people are buried under these trees. 

 

 

      Early in the morning, ghosts prune these cedars.

                                         

 

Many decapitations have taken place in this chair

                                               

The sleepy little city of Camrose refuses to reveal the gruesome past : A history which its citizens dare not speak of, except in barely audible whispers. Acts and events which instill profound trauma and fear.

Here, secrets go, with the townspeople, to the grave.

October 31, 2014

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