Getting under the skin

ARTISTS don't have all the answers. Instead, the best ones pose questions. In the case of British figurative painters Debbie Baird and Brian Wood, who have a joint exhibition 'Ego: Identity and Power' at Birmingham's RBSA Gallery, it's an important one: must we accept the cards we're dealt by life?

- RUTH MILLINGTON

Hanging from one wall of the show is a small but mighty oil on canvas, 'Disruption', by Wood. Within an expressively painted tangle of bodies, a skeletal man kneels over two playing cards strewn on the floor. Tension builds as he's watched by another male figure, wearing a black bowler hat and a red jacket, who stands somewhat ominously in the background.

Power dynamics are central to the symbolic tableaux of Wood, who had a former career in the city, where he could observe authority structures in action. On canvas, he explores these rituals and their effects on our identity - individual and collective - through archetypal figures who emerge from his mind.

In 'Ego?' a crowd of featureless, abstracted bodies are seen from behind, all staring at something unknown in the distance. In turn, anyone looking at this painting is forced to join them in the very same pose. This picture evokes herd mentality, which has been heightened in the age of social media mobs, where individuality can easily dissipate.