JOHN GOTO : LOSS OF FACE
with music by Michael Young

13 April - 26 May 2002
Wolsey Art Gallery

This exhibition was arranged by Norwich Gallery in collaboration with the Wolsey Art Gallery.

John Goto’s digitally-constructed photographs juxtapose classical and ancient iconography and the values of high culture with abusive action and the excesses of contemporary Britain. Loss of Face was comprised of approximately one hundred images of medieval Roods photographed during 1990 and 1991 in Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon while John was the artist in residence at Kettles Yard, Cambridge. The exhibition with over a hundred photographs of defaced heads was juxtaposed with electronic experimental music by Michael Young.

Over a three year period in the early nineties Goto visited parish churches across Norfolk, Suffolk and South Devon searching out paintings of saints and angels on the few remaining medieval rood screens. During the Reformation these paintings were defaced and the photographs show the violence and damage done to the faces. Such screens were generally cleared from churches but a few were strangely left in their mutilated state. On mass these images show how obsessive the methods of destruction were. Goto focuses close up to the heads making them appear like individuals rather than religious figures. Each of Michael Young's tracks alludes to a different location, social practice or musical genre. They are heard sporadically in the exhibition space, playing in random order with varying pauses in between. The experimental music changes the atmosphere of the gallery and concentrates your attention to the images on display.

Also hung alongside the photographs by John Goto was a portrait from the Museums Collections. William Dowsing c.1645-55, 17th century English School, oil on canvas. William Dowsing of Laxfield, Suffolk was known as the ‘Iconoclast’. In 1644 Dowsing was appointed Parliamentary Visitor to Suffolk and within a few months he and his troops had destroyed hundreds of religious objects such as stained-glass windows, monumental brasses, crucifixes and pictures or effigies of saints, angels and apostles.

John Goto studied at Central St Martin’s during the late sixties before completing British Council scholarships in Paris and Prague. He has exhibited extensively in the UK and Europe including recent solo shows at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Portfolio Gallery, Edinburgh, and The National Portrait Gallery, London. Goto is a senior lecturer in Photography at the University of Derby and lives in Oxford. John Goto is represented by Andrew Mummery Gallery, London.

Click here for more information about Michael Young's music

Click here for information about accompanying catalogue