Conor Rogers in his studio courtesy of Andy Brown Photography.
Statement
At the heart of my practice is storytelling. It is manifested using a visual, poetic, and symbolic language translated through painted, sculpted, and poetic depictions from everyday life. I use this as a means of navigating through time and place combined with a critical approach towards painting as an object. Although my works have a familiar subject matter - the landscapes I experience every day - I intend that they go beyond the illusion of what I see to become both object and image at the same time. In combining image and object I endeavour to convey the intense reality of life in Britain. The artworks are by-products of deep personal connections made with lived experiences, memories, conversations and explore social commentary, cultural identities, class dynamics, stereotypes, and our sense of self in Britain. On the one hand my works are hyper-ordinary, but at the same time, I hope, extraordinary. The ordinary - the quotidian, or even abject - is turned into something precious, even jewel-like, through hours of time and labour.
“For the artist, it’s his aim to bring Britain’s vulnerabilities to the forefront, our fears and cultural insecurities. But at the same time, championing the opposite: our strength, communities and pride.
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“Conor Rogers is an artist with whom narratives like this stick. They speak to and our shared cultural story, threading through both the shame the pride. To do this, Conor’s social reportage is not based in worldly realism. His motive, like many artists (see: Anthony Van Dyck, Norman Rockwell, and Lucian Freud) and great novelists (read: Marcel Proust, DH Lawrence, Irvine Welsh), is to enhance in order to become more real. He will amplify some and dull other parts of his work to guarantee the truth of his experience is conveyed, and nothing else.
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BIO
Conor Rogers is an award-winning Sheffield-based artist and graduate of Sheffield Hallam University. He was shortlisted for the John Moores painting prize 2014 and was selected to exhibit in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2015 at Primary Gallery, Nottingham & ICA, London. He has since exhibited work both nationally and internationally in group shows, arts festivals and biennales. He was twice shortlisted for the John Ruskin Prize in 2017 and 2019 both exhibitions being held in Sheffield then Manchester. In 2019 Conor was named as the 1st Prize winner of the Robert Walters Group UK Young Artist of the Year Award held at the Saatchi Gallery London. In 2020 he exhibited in ‘Me Myself and I’ a group show held at Collyer Bristow gallery, London. He has since taken part in numerous group online exhibitions throughout the pandemic and early in 2021 showed work with Guts Gallery London for their online show ‘For the many not the few’. He later in June 2021 exhibited in his debut solo show ‘Manor Boy’ at Yorkshire Artspace, Sheffield as part of the Freeland’s Foundation residency program ‘Platform 20’. At the end of 2021 Conor was invited to exhibit in the group show ‘Fully Awake’ at Manchester’s Holden gallery and was also invited to judge the 2021 iteration of the UK New Artist Prize. Whilst being a judge he simultaneously exhibited work in the same exhibition as an honorary guest held at the Saatchi Gallery, London. He is currently taking part in a group exhibition ‘EN-GER-LAND’ at OOF Gallery London and has most recently been commissioned as a collaborative artist for the National Portrait Galleries ‘Creative Connections programme’.