by sean mcguill
Oil on paper
h: 21 w: 30 (cms).
This piece is based off a grainy black and white survailance photo of Rhino poachers at a nature reserve in South Africa. I wanted to explore the notion of how an image can appear to be aesthetically pleasing while also represeinting something sinister that may not be immediately evident without knowing the story behind it.
The painting is part of an ongoing series made in response to the sociological effects of the Internet and the dissimation of information. By working with random images that appear on my Facebook newsfeed and removing them from their original context, I seek to echo the way in which they can lose their original meaning or be used to support an unrelated political agenda, as often happens on social media.