Ryan Riddington's Page

Riddington's work is literal minded in the best sense. Every idea his imagination proposes has to be measured against his own direct observation and lived experience. Everything has to be felt, not just emotionally but actually, or offer the possibility of being so. And yet the results are often cryptic.His self-portraits seem a form of self-effacement. This occurs literally in 'A Crowd', where his face is masked by a self-portrait by Van Dyck.In 'Protection', the first of a triptych, he has…See More

Queer Self Portraits Now. By Jonathan Kemp. “I am large, I contain multitudes.” - Walt Whitman We might ask: to what extent does the problematization of the notion of ‘self’ problematize the notion of self-portraiture? How does the plurality of the self, the unfixed performance of a necessarily fragmented subjectivity (in other words, the only kind), affect the ways we represent that ‘self’? How does it unlock, for the artist, something that art knew all along? That there are many voices…See More

Queer Self Portraits Now. By Jonathan Kemp. “I am large, I contain multitudes.” - Walt Whitman We might ask: to what extent does the problematization of the notion of ‘self’ problematize the notion of self-portraiture? How does the plurality of the self, the unfixed performance of a necessarily fragmented subjectivity (in other words, the only kind), affect the ways we represent that ‘self’? How does it unlock, for the artist, something that art knew all along? That there are many voices…See More