Eduardo Paolozzi: General Dynamic F.U.N.

A compulsive collector, a jumbler of icons and a pioneer of Pop, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005) is equally revered for his mechanistic sculptures and his kaleidoscopic print projects. The artist, who described himself as 'a wizard in Toytown', transformed the mundane, the derelict and the mass-produced into images that zap with electric eclecticism and impress with their graphic complexity. 'Carrots into pomegranates!'

Paolozzi's canny alchemy is vividly apparent in General Dynamic F.U.N, a series of fifty screenprints and photolithographs created between 1965 and 1970. Here Paolozzi employs the technologies of mass-reproduction and gorges on its idols – the household names and familiar faces of consumer advertising, high fashion and Hollywood. The artist's friend and sometime collaborator, J.G. Ballard, described General Dynamic F.U.N as a 'unique guidebook to the electric garden of our minds'.

The prints, which bear idiosyncratic titles such as 'Totems and Taboos of the Nine-to-Five Day'; 'Twenty Traumatic Twinges' and 'Cary Grant as a Male War Bride', do not occupy a rigid sequence but can be assembled and viewed in any order. For Paolozzi, the modern age, exposed as ephemera, is a necessarily fragmented collision of visual stimulus and influence, and his work is a 'health warning for an uncreative and thriftless society'.

TOUR DATES:

14 January - 12 February 2012
Ashfield School, Kirkby in Ashfield

18 February - 18 March 2012
Museum and Art Gallery, Doncaster

24 March - 22 April 2012
Jersey Arts Centre, St Helier

2 June - 1 July 2012
Art Gallery, Beverley

7 July - 9 September 2012
Gymnasium Gallery, Berwick upon Tweed

15 September - 14 October 2012
The Brindley, Runcorn

20 October - 18 November 2012
North London Collegiate School, Edgware

24 November 2012 - 6 January 2013
AVAILABLE FOR TOUR

12 January - 10 February 2013
AVAILABLE FOR TOUR

16 February - 17 March 2013
AVAILABLE FOR TOUR

Tour continues

Information

Security Category C

£700 + VAT (financial year 2011/12 & 2012/13)

Gallery requirements: 30 - 40 running metres

If you are interested in hiring this exhibition or would like more information, please contact Alison Maun, email: alison.maun@southbankcentre.co.uk, tel: 020 7960 5222.

Images ©The Eduardo Paolozzi Foundation.