3 Review(s)

Fresh Fresher is a monograph on the work of British artist Jane Simpson. It is a celebration of her career since 1992 when, while still a student, she first experimented with the use of ice and her now trademark refrigeration technique. Rather than following a strict chronology, the book surveys Simpson's work thematically, punctuated by three critical texts. An introduction by Norman Rosenthal and essays by Ulrike Groos, Director, Kunsthalle D?sseldorf and Mark Godfrey, Slade School of Art, place the artist's work in a broader art historical context. By positioning the pieces in abstract perspectives of vivid colour, the book's design accentuates the pastel tones and shades that, as in her rubber casts of kitchen utensils or photographs of Tupperware, Simpson characteristically uses in her work. Fresh Fresher takes its title from Simpson's sculpture of a pair of vases with roses in different stages of bloom, a work she based on two of Giorgio Morandi's paintings. A variation on the classical tradition of still life, this piece (2000) exemplifies the underlying themes invariably present in the artist's work to date: the process of appropriation and transformation, and the dialectics of decay and renewal.