Whether collabarative or conceived and executed as individual artistic statements,the collaged work of Bob and Rosa Osborne has recently taken a new direction.This has entailed a new use of `found`or `ready made`material,sourced from the world of the junk shop,car boot sale and skip.
In particular,the children`s doll appears in raw pictorial compositions or on wall-bound tableaux.
Here the illusionistic and concrete,the two and three dimensional,vie for our attention so that the art work accomodates both poetic and surrealistic intentions,on the one hand,and fully concrete or abstract qualities,on the other.This mix of literary and purely visual endows the work with a vital tension,or paradox,calling into question the role of the plastic arts at large,within the broader cultural context.Old questions concerning aesthetic automony (art for art`s sake) or social utility and function (art for society`s sake)are thereby touched on.
The subject of the doll,used by the celebrated surrealist artist Hans Bellmer,has influenced important Modern British sculptors,such as Bernard Meadows,Reg Butler and Ralph Brown.
For Bob and Rosa Osborne,the use of the doll is perhaps less overtly sculptural,than a discreet extension of the satirical photomontage and art brut textural collage that had hitherto exercised their pictorial imaginations.
The slightly disturbing,or even,macabre associations of a child`s plaything subjected to distortion,or damage,adds a further conceptual veneer.
