Artwork Details:
Artist: James Loy born 1953. Title: National Pride. Date: 2005.
Medium: Acrylic on canvas and linen.
Dimensions: Support 900 x 600 x 18 mm. Frame: 1130 x 830 x 40 mm (as an integral part of the work).
This painting formed the centre piece for the entrances and exits on Blackpool's old historical promenade sea defence wall.
National Pride stands as a work on its own merits. The twelve paintings which make up the entrances and exits on Blackpool Promenade form a single piece of work and should be viewed as one piece to appreciate the ebb and flow of the abstract flags at the foot of each painting.
National Pride considers issues of defence, protection and future of society in the world as a whole. It attempts to focus on the idea that a nation is only as strong as the powers of the people. The example of using the national flag as a grey scale and painting the unborn foetus in the womb in multi colours (drawn from the colours in flags) suggests for us to look at the power of life and not a colourful piece of cloth.
Art2aid.com is a domain name James has owned since the Thailand Tsunami of 2004. His wife and younger daughter were vacationing in Bangkok at the time of the disaster. James thought of the idea that art2aid could become a tool to generate value for many different charities around the world through the sale and resale of art and many other goods.
The idea is as simple as this: James would sell a painting and donate 10% (less administration cost) of the sale price to a charity of his choice. An agreement would be made between the purchaser and art2aid that whenever the painting is resold the seller would donate 10% of the sale price (less administration cost) to a charity of his or her choice. There would be an agreement in place to maintain the practice in perpetuity over the sale and re-sale of the original piece of work.
James would intend to start this process in motion on the sale of his work 'National Pride' with a price tag of £12,000.
The border was specially made with a linen bed sheet that has been pulled down through the centre of the frame to create a series of perspective creases in the material. The lined was then bonded onto the frame and overpainted in three mixed colours dark red, green and blue to form a near black. more than 200 flags of the world were painted on the front face and four sides of the frame.
You can see 48 foetuses in the womb, painted in a mixture of shades of colours found from looking at the colours in all the flags of the world.
The foetus is painted in a grid and each quadrant of the painting has twelve images facing from left to right and right to left. The bottom half of the painting is a mirror image of the top half except in colour. This is to suggest a global user and lower hemisphere and 12 hours of day and twelve hours of night.
National Pride stands as a work on its own merits. The twelve paintings which make up the entrances and exits on Blackpool Promenade form a single piece of work and should be viewed as one piece to appreciate the ebb and flow of the abstract flags at the foot of each painting.
National Pride considers issues of defence, protection and future of society in the world as a whole. It attempts to focus on the idea that a nation is only as strong as the powers of the people. The example of using the national flag as a grey scale and painting the unborn foetus in the womb in multi colours (drawn from the colours in flags) suggests for us to look at the power of life and not a colourful piece of cloth.
Art2aid.com is a domain name James has owned since the Thailand Tsunami of 2004. His wife and younger daughter were vacationing in Bangkok at the time of the disaster. James thought of the idea that art2aid could become a tool to generate value for many different charities around the world through the sale and resale of art and many other goods.
The idea is as simple as this: James would sell a painting and donate 10% (less administration cost) of the sale price to a charity of his choice. An agreement would be made between the purchaser and art2aid that whenever the painting is resold the seller would donate 10% of the sale price (less administration cost) to a charity of his or her choice. There would be an agreement in place to maintain the practice in perpetuity over the sale and re-sale of the original piece of work.
James would intend to start this process in motion on the sale of his work 'National Pride' with a price tag of £12,000.
The border was specially made with a linen bed sheet that has been pulled down through the centre of the frame to create a series of perspective creases in the material. The lined was then bonded onto the frame and overpainted in three mixed colours dark red, green and blue to form a near black. more than 200 flags of the world were painted on the front face and four sides of the frame.
You can see 48 foetuses in the womb, painted in a mixture of shades of colours found from looking at the colours in all the flags of the world.
The foetus is painted in a grid and each quadrant of the painting has twelve images facing from left to right and right to left. The bottom half of the painting is a mirror image of the top half except in colour. This is to suggest a global user and lower hemisphere and 12 hours of day and twelve hours of night.