2: Plain White

Stephen Palmer

Photoscreenprint

2002

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  • About the work
    Location
    Country: Singapore
    City: Singapore
    Place: British High Commission
    This is one of five prints from a series entitled Carrier Bag Top Ten, in which Stephen Palmer has used the technique of photographic screen printing to reproduce ten images of shopping bags. Each one depicts a different flattened polythene carrier bag with commercial designs and slogans, that is typically given to customers at corner shops, fish and chip shops, discount stores and market stalls. By depicting the bags on a dramatic glossy background, Palmer wryly elevates them to an iconic status and transforms these ubiquitous objects into emblems of contemporary urban life. His use of commercial graphics is reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s soup can and soap box packaging of the 1960s. Palmer’s presentation of the bags as rare icons hints at their possible future extinction, as people are encouraged to use them less. Palmer’s artistic production spans painting, screen printing, photography and installation work; alongside a curatorial practice.
  • About the artist
    Stephen Palmer lives and works in London. He completed a BA in Fine Art, Painting, at Winchester School of Art in 1990 and an MA in Fine Art at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1999. Group and two-person exhibitions include ‘Paradoxes’, Quay Arts, Newport, Isle of Wight (2022), ‘In (Matters of the Soul)’, ASC Gallery, London (2021), ‘Vitalistic Fantasies’, Cello Factory, London (2020), ‘Back Put Together it’ (two-person show with Roland Hicks), Vane, Newcastle upon Tyne (2019), ‘The Flesh of Thought’, Blyth Gallery, Imperial College, London (2019), ‘Creekside Open 2019’, APT Gallery, London (2019), and ’Humble As Hell’, The Kurt Schwitters Merzbarn, Elterwater, Ambleside (2017).
  • Explore
    Places
    Subjects
    carrier bag, shopping
    Materials & Techniques
    screenprint, photoscreenprint
  • Details
    Artist
    Stephen Palmer
    Title
    2: Plain White
    Portfolio Title
    Carrier Bag Top Ten
    Edition
    1/3
    Date
    2002
    Medium
    Photoscreenprint
    Dimensions
    height: 64.10 cm, width: 44.90 cm
    Acquisition
    Purchased from Workplace, February 2003
    Inscription
    verso, b: Stephen Palmer / Carrier Bag Top 10 #2 / 1/3
    Provenance
    Paul Moss, Workplace, at Art 2003: The London Art Fair
    GAC number
    17760