Search Party 2020

Curator: Let's take a look at Joshua Flint's "Search Party," painted in 2020, using acrylics on canvas. It's quite dreamlike. Editor: It has this beautifully unsettling mood. There is this very pale girl sitting on the back of some giant bird, is it an ostrich maybe? And yet the whole image is kind of desaturated, indistinct even. Like a fading memory or a forgotten photograph. Curator: Flint is really playing with the history of the painted portrait here, but also disrupting it. There's the classic composition with a central figure, yet he thins his acrylics, uses lots of glazing, resulting in these blurred, layered effects that really foreground the medium. It's all about the paint itself. Editor: Absolutely. This feels like an exploration of childhood itself as a fragile construct. I can’t help but read it as a commentary on innocence, the lost self in that child's expression feels significant. Consider this positioning relative to power dynamics: a young white child on the back of what might be a helpless and controlled animal is charged. Curator: Well, beyond the representation, the physicality of it fascinates me. The texture. How does that smooth, almost translucent handling of the paint relate to its meaning? It looks almost ethereal; as though she and the bird are literally fading from view! That's so achieved by thinners, carefully laid glazes building up tone and hue to evoke mood as much as representation. It's technical expertise married to emotive ends. Editor: Right, it raises interesting questions about the sustainability of that “innocence,” or perhaps its illusory nature from the beginning. Flint brings to the fore historical dynamics—a privileged, dominant Western image, superimposed on something wild. Also note the complete lack of adult presence. A "search party", perhaps, but searching for whom or what? There is a sense of danger underlying the surface of what seems idyllic. Curator: Precisely. And even just thinking about it from the materials outwards. It’s the layering of the diluted paints which gives that feeling of something that might disappear at any moment! Editor: It’s striking how contemporary the concerns of the image are while still carrying resonances of art history. I appreciate how Flint pushes those historical references in order to examine the themes that remain urgent to this day. Curator: And from my perspective, it highlights just how central the act of making – the skillful use of materials and the conscious revealing of process - are in establishing not only a narrative, but also an atmosphere. Editor: A compelling work, no matter how you approach it.