Art Works > 21st Century Frieze. 2000-2015. by Gerry Gleason.

Memory Game. 191 x 188cm. acrylic on canvas 2010.
Over the last few years I have been interested in Bacon's use of the space frame, other practitioners of this formal spacial device would have been Giacometti in his sculpture and Graham Sutherland in his paintings. Who was the first to use this device is debatable, though I think Bacon took it further. I like the way that it isolates and contains the figure as if in a glass box. I have at times used colour fields to contain and frame the figures, as I have for a long time been an admirer of Barnett Newman's work. The biographer and Critic Michael Peppiatt perceptively deals with Bacon's very difficult relationship with his father. I have tried in this image to show the competitive relationship at times, between fathers and sons trying to score points. I feel games have been around for a long time, thus the simple paper darts on the monitor from my childhood. The game played is a long way from the physical reality of war its self and the increasing use of Pilotless drones controlled from several thousand miles from the intended target becomes almost a form of digital game playing in itself.