artist:artist:project:
Swan
location:
Rochdale Canal - initally just up from Great Ancoats St - and then travelling
on the Rochdale Canal
date(s):
23 May - 16 August 2003 or until removed from canal
description:
Jim Medway's work has long examined the textures of urban space as evidenced
through his drawings and paintings in which the youths of Salford and Manchester
are portrayed as hooch-swiging cats. For Artranspennine03 Medway has applied
another strand of his work - an exploration of the aesthetic condition of English
popular culture in its historic, or perhaps, mock historic formulation. Medway
has taken a can of cigarette lighter fluid and painted it with the emblematic
roses which routinely adorn the canal barges that ply the former industrial
routes of the North of England. And with a gesture fitting for one who frequently
envelopes the "lovely" within the "nasty" he's thrown it
in a canal. The work can be seen along the length of the Rochdale Canal until
such time as it sinks or gets stolen.