In the documentary on the making of the film ‘Taxi Driver’ the editor, Tom Rolf, explains Scorsese’s habit of lingering on an image for what seems to be an inordinately long length of time. Rolf initially rejected this idea, but then came to realise Scorsese’s purpose. He said “It allowed the viewer to reinvest in the image like an athlete pausing to take breathe, one comes back to it the second time round from a different perspective.”
The new set of paintings by John Monks takes this idea and marries it with commonplace images and experiences. A bed seen everyday, but never really seen, becomes a raft on which to float across the imagination. A chair drawn towards you invites engagement; and a landscape scanned from a distance has a focal point in the bridge that links the opposite sides. The exhibition title, Day in Day out, takes this notion of repetition of everyday events and by focusing, intensely forces the viewer to see the image with a new level of engagement.
