Iain Bailey

Shown in Toronto in 2008, In Defence of Migrants (Part I) was the first exhibition of work by Iain Bailey to be shown in Canada. The Oblation series from this show resulted from Iain’s practice at the time, attempting to articulate aspects of human and personal weakness, vulnerability, ailment and recovery. The suggestion of migration in the exhibition’s title refers in part to a journey of healing and progress towards a more complete life and lifestyle; but also to a literal relocation from one country to another, and the feelings of distance, removal, and alienation encountered. The paintings represent healthy expressions of frustration and anxiety, which reflected an early stage in an ongoing process of revitalisation and adaptation.

In the preliminary phases of In Defence of Migrants Iain began to examine aspects of traditional and non-traditional English folk art, particularly paintings made in his home region, the North-West. This was an attempt to reconnect with his English heritage by investigating expressions from its cultural (grass) roots, assisting an exploration of appropriate ways and means to communicate his sense of loss and removal from his country and culture.
Self-taught folk art practices, (also known as popular art, outsider art, traditional art, and working class art), operate within an artistic sphere which posits the authentic as an essential attribute, bestowing value to objects and creators. It seems that the characteristics of self-taught folk artists and their life stories are as important as the formal features of the created objects.
Although emerging as a painter within the domain of established mainstream artistic practices, Iain appreciates what he sees as the direct honesty, integrity, and freedom of various outsider practices. He has become increasingly interested in notions of otherness, unique experience and individual identities within culturally homogeneous groups. Similar to work made as part of In Defence of Migrants, folk art generally develops into practices that are removed from or tenuously linked to the contemporary cultural mainstream. Iain’s simple handling of paint and composition, the sometimes flattened sense of perspective, and the romantic qualities of his recent paintings suggest folk expression to be a viable way of engaging with a pronounced sense of evolving identity. The combination of his artistic background and the folk art-type influence and references in Iain’s work place the recent paintings in a space somewhere between the “inside” and the “outside” of the artistic realm. He suggests that this has a kind of equalising effect, and would persuade audiences to question the classification of contemporary fine art as high in relation to “lower” modes of folk expression which are often relegated as being of lesser cultural value and significance.

The current phase of the project involves the development of themes that commonly deal with the process of settling in to a new homeland and new lifestyle. Certain motifs appear in different guises throughout many of the completed works. For example, birds are often used to indicate migration, but are in the same instance employed as metaphors for travellers, embarked on personal “journeys” from one way of life to another. Fairground attractions such as sinister-looking Helter Skelters offer an insight into the private frustrations of an artist experiencing downwardly spiralling feelings of despair and futility. The recent paintings are unique – not made in series. They reflect the ephemeral nature of the ideas behind them during a period of wavering change. They are of approximately uniform size, usually seven inches by five inches: similar to snap-shot photographs made as mementoes of a journey.

Iain keeps journals and notebooks of his experiences and ideas, channels visual information from his surroundings and environment, and appropriates images from a variety of media sources including magazines and the world-wide-web. The working process is an organic one. Some paintings develop rapidly, while others take longer, and require more attention. Regardless of the length of time or the degree of involvement that goes in to each individual work, the uniform scale is a simple attempt to formally equalise their value, so that one cannot be considered of greater worth than another. The resulting body of work (in progress) essentially charts the advancement of a recent immigrant to Toronto, and represents his attempts to find a personal voice in a new and vastly multicultural arena.

Born in the UK in 1979, Iain is an English artist and portrait painter. He studied Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland; and the University of Central Lancashire, England, where he was awarded a Masters Degree in 2007. With over ten years painting experience, he exhibits regularly, paints to commission, and has work housed in private collections internationally. Iain moved to Toronto in 2007, since which time he has begun and continued to develop what he regards as a long-term project. The undertaking deals with the potential for identities, once frayed, fragmented, complicated and splintered due to emigration, illness and factors beyond personal control, to recover and to evolve. The overarching title of the ongoing work is In Defence of Migrants.