Sorcha Dallas

In his first major Scottish show since representing Scotland at the 2005 Venice Biennale, Pollard will be exhibiting new works exploring the possibilities of clowning around in the studio through opaque allusions to early 1980s New Romanticism. A new range of oil paintings, works produced from make-up and large bronze medallions focus on the motif of Pierrot the clown, a na?Øve bohemian from the Comedia dell’Arte famously revived by David Bowie in Ashes to Ashes (1980). A series of clowns and jesters provisionally cobbled together appear to disintegrate just as they take shape, the thick impasted surfaces held in aspic by being cast in the high art veneer of bronze or oil. They are lavish tokens of suburban new romantics making-up to go posing at St. Moritz, Hell, Le Kilt and Le Beetroot. We are unable to tell if their expressions are caricatured or genuine – the sad clown, the happy clown, the evil clown – since clowns are presentation incarnate figures known for superficial melodrama, of fluid apocalypstick identities. The clown is a liminal figure - part theatrical ritual, part mutating satirical representation of changing social circumstances. Similarly black marks are makeshift conventions; they can be added at the stroke of eyeliner or wiped away with a cleanser. In this, Pollard’s works betray a sophisticated construal of studio practice, of working with malleable media that allow him to dabble, make mistakes and test parameters.