Action, Camera!

As social commentary, BÂRLĀDEANU’s satirical anti-communist and anti-capitalist assemblages reveal a wry sense of humour and sharp political savvy. Their brilliance, however, is down to their maker’s visual flair, where impossible eye-lines and one point perspective coincide effortlessly with the high-gloss, the pornographic and the surreal. 

BÂRLĀDEANU describes himself as a maverick film director. In these, his movie-stills, he rules roost, setting world-famous actors and political big-wigs against each other, and primarily for his own amusement. At the tender age of 76, it is clear ION BÂRLĀDEANU has only just begun. 

It was a chance meeting with contemporary curator Dan Popescu which brought BÂRLĀDEANU into the public eye. He has since been the subject of numerous group and solo shows, including the 2015 Vienna Biennale and The Museum of Everything at Kunsthal Rotterdam in 2016. Bârlādeanu’s work has been featured in The Guardian and Vice Media and is included in numerous international collections.

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As a teenager, CONSTABLE would salvage cereal boxes to craft reconstructions of his favourite optical gadgets. Today these tools are transformed.

The ceramic sculptures for which he is renowned sit, majestic and collapsed,
eyeing the world around them with their primary, pastel and silvery glazes.
It is the metaphor which compels us to touch them.

For as CONSTABLE’s sight diminishes, so his fascination with the way we
see intensifies. His objects are talismans. They challenge us and the meaning
of our sight, at a time when perception is defined by a digital lens.

ALAN CONSTABLE has been based at the Arts Project Australia studio in
Melbourne for 25 years. Through their advocacy, his work is now in significant public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria (Australia). Exhibitions include The Museum of Everything in London in 2011 and Rotterdam in 2016.