NORWICH, ENGLAND.- The Norwich Gallery at the Norwich School of Art and Design will present "Smash Your Face In - David Ostrem photographs 1977-79", on view from March 19 to April 27, 2002. The exhibition was curated by Roy Arden in association with the Or Gallery Vancouver and funded by East England Arts Canadian High Commission. David Ostrem was born in Portland, Oregon in 1945.  He saw the Vietnam war as a "crime against an emerging nation", and  'dodged the Draft' and arriving in Vancouver in April 1969.  Ostrem recalls that he was not exposed to contemporary art until his early twenties. An animated film of a Manhattan street scene by Red Grooms, along with the work of Warhol was among his first inspirations. In 1974 he enrolled at the Vancouver School of Art. The still-life photographs in this exhibition represent his first mature works. They reflect Pop Art, which was predominant among artists and students of the time and the Conceptual and Minimalist strategies that Ostrem was introduced to by artists such as Ian Wallace and N.E. Thing Co. Ostrem's photographic still-lives were followed by the paintings and silk-screen prints for which he is well known. In 1985 his paintings were selected for the EAST International exhibition in Norwich by Giuseppe Penone and Marian Goodman.

This exhibition will present 20 of Ostrem's austere black and white photos, twelve of  the more whimsical colour prints, and six previously unseen, and rather dark, cibachrome prints. These images are largely studio still-lives depicting tabletop arrangements of diverse objects.  Ostrem managed to give form to his mindscape in compositions, which can now be interpreted as time capsules providing a very personal reflection on the realities of an era. References to current events and the recent past are affected through the inclusion of news, popular, and sub cultural printed matter.  Rock & roll, notions about art, Vietnam, hippie 'freak' culture, and the banal everyday coincide or collide in sometimes unsettling, other times humorous allegory.  In recent art there has been a resurgence of some of the aesthetic strategies and subjects engaged by these works, which makes this reconsideration timely and appropriate.