While studying fine art at Kingston University Charles encountered a central problem of authenticity in the face of art history, of being situated within the layers of tradition and the references that transfer from one art movement to the next. The problematic role of institutions in maintaining our perception of those artworks and the invitation, being within the age of the individual, to find one’s own voice with that.

Much of his work is in response to this predicament, finding ways to re-enact artworks, to repeat either an action or performance and through that repetition finding difference, a mutation or development from that repetition. He went on to re-enact performance artworks by Bas Jan Ader and Bruce Nauman, created fictitious art movements and mythologies and recreate old renaissance works with modernist objects.

The artworks on display here were originally designed to function within an instillation and in conjunction with performances. They are often ‘empty artworks’ that appear to reference another’s work, or the lack of it’s own content to emphasise the situation of seeing the artwork itself. Charles seeks to use transgressive tactics to critique the art institutions use of control over meaning, the underlying violence of of that control and to awaken the spectators role within that dynamic.