Sheila Rennick
Uber Off
I draw on contemporary life, stories and personal experiences for my work. I like to poke fun at the most tasteless elements of popular culture and I am preoccupied with the disconnect between our notions of self and the often unpleasant reality. My works is piled heavily with a range of paradoxes and oxymoron's. With humour and hints of pathos, i like to create what could be described as pitiful scenes where the protagonists jostle in their own personal turmoil and grapple to exist within the realms they inhabit. The works are vistas into both ludicrous reveries and personal experiences to comment on societal hierarchies and the patriarchy.
Uber Oof was painted after reading about an Uber Eats Driver collapsing outside an apartment block and the person who ordered the take away took up his meal before calling the ambulance. Maybe there was a valid reason for this but i wanted to make a comment on the gig economy, capitalism and the dehumanising situation many workers find themselves in.
I use very thick oil paints in my work and choose brightly coloured paints to contrast with the menacing narratives in some of the work. Recently i have been preparing images to work from on a digital screen and working directly onto the canvas.
