Public Gallery hosts 'I Ain’t Half The Man I Wanted To Be' by Hunter Potter

Join Public Gallery on Wednesday 5th February from 6.30pm for the Private View of 'I Ain't Half The Man I Wanted To Be', Hunter Potter's debut UK solo exhibition.

The exhibition will be on show until 29th of February at Hackney Downs Studios.

Revolving around his personal meditation on the expectations of masculinity, Potter examines real and imagined outcomes of his own life given a different set of choices and decisions.

Heavily exaggerated and often fantastical, Potter’s paintings pay homage to the various people and lifestyles observed and experienced throughout his upbringing. The work, therefore, seems to respond to, as well as question, Potter’s own potential role and position within the romantic small-town, blue-collar, Americana environment.

Throughout this new series, Potter mines his own memories and nostalgia to examine, quite simply, the man that he could have, and perhaps wishes he had become. Often presented through symbolic Wild West metaphors, the paintings are both idealized and self-critical. These hyper masculine characters clad in flannel, cowboy boots, and prison stripes, work to question the very expectation of what it means to be a ‘real’ American man in the 21st century.

Using repetitive, familiar, and metaphoric imagery, the paintings place Potter’s own life experiences within the wider arena of Americana folklore: stories that are neither past nor present, fact nor fiction, right nor wrong, but more so a recognisable combination of it all.

Entry is free.