Paul Gallagher

I work with collage and found imagery. I am interested in examining the ceaseless proliferation of images found in mass production, mass media communications and popular culture, and finding ways to recontextualise these images. This is achieved by cropping, excision, folding, rotating, or illumination - to create fragmented, skewed versions of the presented reality. Minimal intervention is key. The intention is not to produce more imagery but to allow the viewer the freedom to be liberated from the constraints of the collective unconscious, presented to us through the mass media. This is an exercise in economy and the aim is to intervene and corrupt the intended message on its journey from producer to recipient - to hijack, distort and subvert this already manipulated imagery, to suggest a new narrative - one where the consumer of the image has the vantage point. In The Third Mind, William Burroughs describes the feeling of paranoia induced by 'really looking' at what is before our eyes on an everyday level - in what he calls the 'naked lunch' of consumption.

My current practice raises questions regarding accepted notions of beauty, identity and attitudes towards women. Identikit interchangable models are enveloped, twisted, a...