Roger Woodiwiss

detail of
Three Jesus Christ Mugs Twice Christmas Tree —

» Overall my series Face Values sets out to exploit the conventions of official portraiture to explore issues around the identity and truth of imagery in today's media dominated society, focussing on the complex and often troubled relationship between originals and reproduction. «

Iconic imagery is combined with mundane forms of depiction in this comical yet thought provoking sculpture. The work takes as its starting point three devotional sculptures depicting different images of Jesus which were copied from Andrea Verrocchio paintings. Woodiwiss turned these into paintings of his own, highlighting the constant recycling of images in art, and then made screen prints of his own painting which further question the authority of the original image. The final abstraction from Verrocchio’s painting can be re-used in many forms, perhaps removing the genius of the artist.

The pun of the mug tree converted to a full size Christmas Tree and the juxtaposition of the traditional and commercial images of Christianity add to the layers of unreality in the work. Here the screen prints are used to make souvenir mugs which remind us of the proliferation of art imagery for commercial reasons on everything from tea-towels to place-mats. Christ is now kitsch!

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