Through painting and drawing, Beth McAlester examines biographical narratives relating to post-Troubles contexts within Northern Ireland. Rather than directly addressing an overarching political system, she draws inspiration from scenes or moments which indicate lingering trauma; weaving through a myriad of social and cultural realities to highlight the disenfranchisement and tribalism that persists around us today.
The apparent deterioration of McAlester’s visual image is paralleled in that of the painted surface, a result of the distressed materials she employs; By working on found surfaces, each painting acquires a unique skin that serves to both destabilise and locate her subjects; The wood, for example, hearkening to builder’s pallets burnt annually during Loyalist parades in Belfast. When utilising this specific imagery it is as much about re-contextualising an image or object as it is about connecting to the original place, questioning where she (and by extension the viewer) stand in relation to those left on the wayside of our contemporary Western imagination.
Forgoing objectivity, McAlester is driven by a hunger to chronicle temporary cultures, looking over shoulders and through other’s eyes to capture the texture of an experience in tandem with her own. Her use of muted palettes and photographic motifs ground the work in reality, yet a tenderness emerges through the construction of the painted image. Gauzy figures and architectural symbols are obscured as the surface becomes a space for dialogue with collective biases. An innate fascination with the blank slate that youth presents in these settings is reflected in my work as my figures, often children, find themselves in confrontational places. The light that illuminates them is neither celestial nor natural, rather it is the light of the photographic flash gun, a floodlight, a battery-powered torch, as she alludes to identities and frameworks preordained by outside agents.