At the heart of this collection lies the theme of perception; understanding how we perceive others and worrying about how we ourselves are perceived. For many this self-awareness is an everyday struggle and yet, ironically, it's often the case that we need not look beyond the tip of our own nose for a muse worth studying. So we had our muse, but it needed a twist, a satirical element that would entice the viewer to find escapism in what they were seeing and ultimately make them smile. This wasn’t brash self-promotion at play, this was collaborative thinking between our creative team and the artist, embracing the brief without taking ourselves too seriously. Above all else, our aim was to mirror Nic’s own approach; we wanted our audience to laugh along with us. It wasn’t long before Nic’s miniature characters were invited to the party and we were assembling our very own diorama through the viewfinder in homage to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. With the combination of a steady hand, a great deal of patience and perhaps a little bit of superglue, our vision was brought to life. Nic, simply by being human, soon found himself immersed in what could easily be one of his own scenes. Leading by example, Joly has created an open dialogue where shame has no place. He asserts that “the confidence to bare our souls comes with age and experience, and the wisdom that we ought to wear our emotional scars with pride,
as they represent challenges we’ve overcome not moments of failure.” His own inimitable style of tackling social commentary through the medium of observational art takes the sting out of the message it delivers. Despite the often introspective subject matter, we are left feeling renewed by the warmth and humour in the art, safe in the knowledge that Joly not only accepts our faults and flaws, he celebrates them. So next time you are lucky enough to see Nic appear at one of our galleries, look a little closer and then ask him how long it took to remove the superglue from his face…
FINE ART COLLECTOR SPRING 2017 71
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