The collection of works with ArtLab by Joe Currie are taken from the full range of the artist’s practice and offer to some extent a retrospective of his work. In his most recent solo exhibition in the UK, at the James Colman Gallery in 2004, the centrepiece of the exhibition was a life-size chrome sculpture of Steve Mc Queen sliding from his motorbike, trying in vain to elude enemy re-capture; an infamous scene from the 1963 POW Movie The Great Escape.

On ArtLab can be seen a study for this work, Escape to Nowhere. We also have displayed Smokey is the Bandit referencing the 1980’s film starring Burt Reynolds. Both these works belong to a series produced in the early 00s in which Currie is probing contemporary notions of celebrity and masculinity by referencing iconic masculine figures from our immediate cultural history. What appeals to the artist is these actors’ persona that combines both their heroism and fallibility; this combination, in itself, is perhaps the essence of their sex appeal.

Currie’s studio is in the West Country and we also have displayed examples of work that demonstrate his connection with rural life. The works are, however, far removed from the notion of the romantic idyll. Landscapes scarred by fly-tipping, industrial dump sites and rubbish tips, as in Wasteland, have been lovingly hewn in pencil and crayon. The works from this series collectively appear to be a detached meditation on the state of our unloved, yet beautiful, countryside.

Lastly, we have examples of the artist’s sculptural works. Throughout his practice, Joe Currie has an undeniable connection with postmodernism in art, one of the most dominant themes in contemporary art in the last twenty years.

The references he is making to film and other media and the way he presents mankind’s ambivalent relationship with nature flag this up. But this tendency is most apparent in his sculptural works. They express the full force of his creative imagination to produce icons in their own right that make comments on our understanding of gender, heroism and sex.