GET REAL by Henry Gibbs, comprises a mural trisected to depict moments of queer friendships, intimacies and conceptions of the self. Lending its name from Simon Shore’s film Get Real (1998) and Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory of The Real, the work alludes to queer narratives, often self-navigated, with less of an emphasis on ‘coming out’ or more stereotypical facets associated with queer identity, but to an insistence of accessing Real drives, Real connections, Real self and Real love. Through degrees of self-reflection, relative distance, forms of gesture and queer relationality, the Real (the source of our drives) can inform queer expression as emotional output and not just sexual being.
Within the mural, light reflects from a base layer of solar reflective paint, a material originally compounded for building heat regulation and protection against UV roof damage, the mural replicates a digital glow, augmented by natural or artificial light whether in daytime or at night. Overlaying this, the black halftone design optically absorbs all colour which, reminiscent to the colour in digital pixels, consists of repetitively painted dots intended to emphasise the recurrence of self-imaging and queer gesture online and through social media. The formation of dots is modulated to form an image determined by distance. The translation of IRL to digital experience is configured as the images become clearer the further away you look or when captured on your phone – a reparative gesture of taking a step back to exercise how we see.
Commissioned in partnership with Pictorum Gallery, GET REAL now forms part of Canary Wharf’s permanent art collection.
*The artwork is located down the steps of Wren Landing on Fisherman’s Walk