Jonathan Batten studied Fine Art Sculpture at St. Martins College, London, graduating in 2006. After leaving college, he was one of the co-founders of Supine Studios, a collective of artists, musicians and designers, living and working in a house near Dalston, north east London. He also assists Les Paine as a modelmaker, mostly making models for Anish Kapoor. They have just completed a series of models which were shown in an exhibiton at the prestigious Royal Institute of British Architects in London. He also works as a technician at the Whitecube gallery.
Three of his Follies series (pictured below) were exhibited in the Christmas 08 show I Saw Three Ships (21 Nov - 21 Dec 08). He will be showing new work at WW in PG: Parental Guidance (5 March - 5 April 09).
I Saw Three Ships (21 Nov - 21 Dec 08) Jonathan Batten's Follies 2, 3 and 4 set an equally unsettling tone. These troubling, complex and darkly humorous pieces are loaded with reference and suggestion, taking in Ghiberti, Michelangelo and Bernini amongst a host of other influences. On first glance, they appear as if they have been salvaged from amongst the endless paraphernalia of some baroque cathedral. On closer inspection, we realise that they contain weirdly subversive elements; a child discarded from its mother's breast and literally 'falling out of the picture', a melting wax Pieta and a blood-red gelatinous cast of the virgin and child, surrounded by decorative flourishes of tar and charred wood. Works like these draw attention to the strange intermingling of classical and Christian iconography in the Catholic aesthetic, as well as the weirdness of the Christmas story itself, which transforms the sordid and bloody act of conception and childbirth into the purest and most divine moment in human history.
