Derek Boshier (b.1937) is a celebrated founding figure of the British Pop art movement. Since he burst onto the swinging London scene of the early 1960s, his work has joyfully and rigorously mined subjects from popular culture to offer commentaries on world events and cultural phenomena.
Boshier’s early paintings were distinguished from his British and American contemporaries for their ironic play with popular imagery and critique of nuclear age anxieties including post-war consumerism, the cult of celebrity and the role of mass media.
Visitors to the exhibition will notice a recurring motif running throughout Boshier’s practice – the solitary human figure or ‘the falling man’. This is the artist’s conception of man’s identity that often appears in silhouetted profiles, fragmented forms and states of action, drawing attention to the fragility and fragmentation of human identity.
Derek Boshier: Image in Revolt is curated by independent curator Helen Little in collaboration with Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
