Richard Starbuck

"Which fills many of these works, often to the edges, acts as a trope for mystery and concealment. It is what we cannot see, but suspect is there, which is more alluring – or terrifying. The hair functions like a stage curtain, a semi-permeable integument which separates us from the unknown. Starbuck has long been fascinated by various underground belief systems, from ufology and cattle mutilation to alien abduction and corn circles. It is not...

"Which fills many of these works, often to the edges, acts as a trope for mystery and concealment. It is what we cannot see, but suspect is there, which is more alluring – or terrifying. The hair functions like a stage curtain, a semi-permeable integument which separates us from the unknown. Starbuck has long been fascinated by various underground belief systems, from ufology and cattle mutilation to alien abduction and corn circles. It is not so much that the artist himself has a belief in any of these cult phenomena; it is more particularly a fascination with the social and psychological systems of belief which underpin them.
Sometimes dark shadows are cast on the striated texture of the hair, as if something – or someone – were hovering nearby, just out of sight. Occasionally the black mass of hair-like substance partly occludes an etiolated photographic image, usually of a face, as if reality were being obliterated by a sinister intrusion from an alternate universe. The fine curvilinear white lines are literally etched through the black pigment, revealing the white ground beneath. The controlled violence of this procedure brings to mind the scraping of nails on a hard surface; a desire to break through the barrier; a painful trace of existence."
Richard Dyer © 2015