Robin Kid: Permanent Display

The exhibition introduces works from Kid’s new LIFE series alongside a selection of works from the past decade. Together, they explore how inherited cultural images and forms of reproduction influence perceptions of the present. At the centre of the exhibition is LIFE, a body of work developed by the artist over several years. Its starting point is a lyric from The Doors’ 1968 song The Unknown Soldier, which brings together domestic routine, mass media, advertising and political violence. Kid considers the continued circulation of these forms of imagery, which are now encountered across news, entertainment, advertising and digital media.

The LIFE works combine silkscreened aluminium cereal boxes with layered paintings based on images from television broadcasts, news media, advertising, cowboy films and social media. Consumer packaging is transformed into a structure for displaying repeated images. Arranged in sequences that recall supermarket shelving and minimalist repetition, the works present familiar images in varying degrees of clarity and erosion.

Throughout "Permanent Display", figures and scenes associated with American popular culture appear as elements of a visual vocabulary that has circulated internationally. Cowboys, television broadcasts, suburban settings and domestic scenes are removed from their original contexts and repeatedly reintroduced, allowing their meanings to change over time.