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Simon Bedwell
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Whilst destroying the quick-hit, constantly shifting message of this ephemeral material, Simon Bedwell also saves it, giving it new weight and an object-quality that meanwhile retains an echo of the familiar.
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Using ClipArt and WordArt software, available to almost anybody with a computer, Simon Bedwell’s posters combine found pictures with words and phrases, real and invented.
Simon Bedwell is best known for his hand-manipulated trashed posters and photographs, using text and spray-paint to generate esoteric, strangely poignant or crass comedic fusions of word and image.
Simon Bedwell draws on the visual vernacular of the streets, employing the cheap and throwaway nostalgia of posters scavenged from billboards, bargain bins and thrift stores as raw materials to fragment, divert and elaborate the original meaning into absurd compositions, poetic narratives and sardonic allegories of power.
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As in much of Simon Bedwell’s work, a wide range of visual material, from promotional blurbs to local newspaper headlines, from ’50s photography to Communist Bloc advertising, combines to shape the final images.
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Some of the posters have had their transient commercial directives so intertwined with the artist’s fictional and material alterations that it is impossible to tell where the original ends and the mutation begins.
