Narbi Price
Profile/CV
“On the way to the library to write this, I was sure I was going to see an empty packet of Space Raiders by the bus stop but all I found was an apple core and a green balloon, unblown. Laurie Anderson once said that novels are full of things happening but she wanted to write a novel about the spaces inbetween, where nothing was happening. It takes a certain state of mind to choose a neutral object as your subject, to choose the mundane over the dramatic, the trivial exterior over the florid treasures of the inner world. On one level, there's a disavowal of the grandiose and histrionic; on another, a gentle subversion of the hierarchy of values that underpins our seeing.
In their carefully crafted blandness, Price’s paintings signify the presence of a willingness to let the world speak for itself. The absence of human subjects and deliberate lack of narrative place the viewer in a uniquely familiar position - alone with the world as it is. The neutral object steers us between the poles of attraction and aversion, and confronts us with the ambiguity of the everyday - the places we inhabit while nothing's happening.”
Text by Nev Clay, originally published in part in Summer 2009 show catalogue, August 2009
Website www.narbiprice.co.uk
