Richard Bartle is a contemporary visual artist and curator, with over 28 years of exhibitions and experience within the arts. He currently works between the UK and Istanbul. Bartle works in a variety of contemporary media including, painting, sculpture, installation, and video. His semi-autobiographical works are inspired by ideas around being immersed in a place or culture and are often informed by underlaying issues around political, social, and environmental concerns.
Bartle cites the works of many of the post-war German artists as having a significant influence over him, particularly within ideas of process and cultural appropriation. This has informed in him a theoretical and visual enquiry into the language and nature of material, in conjunction with an obsessive curiosity around media imagery and iconography. The resulting art works are an assemblage of styles, ideas, and images that engage with the issues of the world, whilst simultaneously appropriating from more aesthetic concepts within design, street art, and art itself.
Bartle works in a variety of media. His paintings are prominently made in acrylic and spray paints, which for him imitate the vibrant immediacy of graphic design and graffiti. Bartle also uses photography and collage within his work as an objectifying tool, as well as surfaces that simulate the texture of real world. His sculptures tend towards a reduced expression of reality and often take the form of maquettes or miniaturised worlds. At the core of all his work though, is an enquiry into the very nature of making and materiality, and the perfecting of the making process.
Bartle is a regular recipient of Arts Council England funding. His resume includes several museum level exhibitions, international residencies and biennials, as well as solo and group exhibitions at both commercial and artist-led galleries.
Bartle says about his life in Istanbul,
“I’ve always sought to reflect something global through my practice, appropriating heavily from universal concepts and iconography, but I have never been able to shake off my own personal position in the world. In Istanbul I encountered a crossroads of ideas that spans the millennia. Here, one need only scratch at the street to find the past or look at the walls of the modern city to find the concerns of the present, here I am inspired by something deep rooted, that feeds my curiosity, something that feels immediate, shared, and visceral”
Photograph by Richard Harland ©