The Dinner Party 2008

Editor: Here we have Derek Boshier’s “The Dinner Party,” made in 2008 with collage and acrylic paint. There's something unsettling about it, with the strange figures and intense colors. How do you interpret this work? Curator: What strikes me immediately is Boshier’s use of figures as masks and his nod to art history through a popular lens. Notice the disjunctive relationships of the figures and how Boshier collapses space between abstraction and figuration. Think about the figures’ social identities at the dinner party: Could this composition be referencing class anxieties in twenty-first century society? Editor: That's interesting! I was focusing more on the kind of playful, almost naive quality of the rendering. Curator: I think we need to hold both readings simultaneously. The almost deliberately 'bad' painting, combined with figures adorned with goldfish bowls, silhouetted figures and other incongruities creates an image that is as humorous as it is disturbing. How do these figures make you feel? Editor: I think uncomfortable, a little on edge. Curator: Exactly! Now consider who has traditionally been excluded from the proverbial “dinner party” of societal power. Boshier is making a bold claim on class structures through visual absurdity, a visual critique that uses laughter to expose these societal divisions. What do you make of that? Editor: It certainly sheds new light on it, I’ll be pondering the statement on class structures. I initially interpreted it simply as social commentary through bizarre and slightly humorous imagery. Curator: Exactly, art can work on many levels and that is what makes Boshier’s critique on the exclusionary constructs of society such an evocative statement.