NEWS: Bobby Benjamin – Object @ Vane Gallery

Image: Bobby Benjamin, Feckless + Drunk, 2022, mixed media

Newcastle’s Vane Gallery celebrates its 25^th anniversary with a new gallery space on the Gateshead side of the Tyne alongside the Orbis Community. Teesside’s Bobby Benjamin has the honour of opening the new space with his celebrated Object show.

Object challenges cultural hegemony while embracing the history of found objects and the materiality of paint. Benjamin’s work is site specific and transient, with deinstallation and destruction often going hand in hand. Object features such found items as flyaway footballs, metal hoops from old beer barrels, snooker balls and discarded fast food (something of a recurring theme in the artist’s work), all articles that symbolise his keen advocacy of the role art has to play in the lives of young people and their communities.

Bobby explains: “the show is called Object because the word’s dual meaning captures the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of what I do. I make art from found objects about things that piss me off. It’s weird how going to the opera is more prestigious than going to a football match. Why are we so hierarchical about culture? I live on a council estate, I work in the art industry; this show is about me trying to reconcile the two.”

Bobby Benjamin: Object is at Vane Gallery, Gateshead from Thursday 9^th June-Saturday 2^nd July.