Radical Loyalty, template for signage for the site

Press Release: 'Chris Evans', STORE Gallery, 9 March–9 April 2005:
Chris Evans deliberately muddles the roles of artist and patron, genius and muse. For his exhibition at STORE, Evans presents a selection from his series, 'The Rock and The Judge', for which he asked police officers around the world to make a drawing of a judge who had made a significant impression on them. In response to each drawing, Evans makes a sculpture of a rock to be positioned in front of the original drawing, taking on the role of imagined defendant. Evans explores the way things in the world relate to each other - policing to sentencing, police officer to artist, sculpture to drawing, rock to defendant.

The Rock & The Judge, (& detail) 2005

Will Bradley wrote of Chris Evans's work: ‘Unlike the politically motivated artists of the last generation, he doesn't ask that art give up any of its connection with personal, poetic or imaginative investigation. Instead he throws these things directly into the path of bureaucrats and institutions, office workers and passing strangers. Very few people actively aspire to being part of a society that's simultaneously oppressive, amoral and dull, but most of the corporate or state structures we sustain have at least one of these characteristics. Evans's work amplifies this paradox. It's like hearing a really good joke and being trapped inside it both at once.'

Chris Evans is represented by STORE, London & Galerie Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam.

Evans’ current work includes Radical Loyalty, currently exhibited in the British Art Show 6. In 2003 Evans purchased an unpromising piece of land in the industrial town of Järvakandi, Estonia and is in the process of turning it into a sculpture park due to open in the summer 2006. The sculptures stem from discussions between Evans and the directors of a number of international companies including Starbucks and Chrysler. He asked them to think about loyalty and how it could be thought of as a radical concept. Each conversation resulted in Evans producing a polymer gravure print of a motif representing ‘Radical Loyalty’. Evans has now employed a collective of artists, once responsible for constructing Soviet era monuments, to produce the sculptures and manage the park.

'Radical Loyalty' has clear links to an earlier project 'The UK Corporate Sculpture Consultancy'. Evans coaxed managing directors in a Leeds industrial park to articulate their vision of a sculpture that would embody the character of their particular company. He then turned patron, commissioning a number of artists to realise those ideas into proposed or finished art works that might one day be placed in the business park. The resulting works were exhibited at the Henry Moore Foundation.

Gemini Sculpture Park (detail), 2000