Keith Farquhar – Living Logo (Jannica and John) (2008) Free-standing life-sized photograph mounted on card.
Actual-size cardboard cut outs, Keith Farquhar’s most recent photographic works share the manufactured haptic qualities of his sculptures. The latest in the series re-animate the figurative emblems of household brands. The series includes a life-size resurrection of the Levi Strauss & Co trade mark. Two pit ponies put the jean’s rivets and double arc stitching to the test, just like they did it back in the Wild West.
In this work, the famous Kappa emblem – featuring a man and woman reclining back to back – is reconstructed with a little help from his friends Jannica and John. Lingua franca brand loyalty is transfigured into something more familial and capricious, a vernacular camaraderie.
The silhouetted source icon is devoid of detail, reduced in complexity to serve reproducibility, corporate identification, instant recognition and product loyalty. Farquhar’s treatment rehydrates human subjects buried in brandscaping, bringing them back to our sensual world as if by magic. In Farquhar’s hands the image is no longer an ideogram, its interpretation limited to a durable graphic identity; its symbolic value as an emblem has been shattered by turning on the lights.
The iconicity of the Kappa signifier is substituted for an over-determined, baroque image. Giving us more information than we need offers us the right to roam an open semantic field. There’s a touch of innocent camp in this – the curious literalism of Janet and John children’s books and late ’70s BBC kid’s comedy Rentaghost are formative influences – balanced with suppressed dramatic tension. The figures are vacant; maybe they’ve fallen out and aren’t speaking. Jannica’s mouth is secreted, John’s stoic. They both gaze into the distance, giving away nothing. The photo cut-out, in this sense, registers logos rather than pathos, the emotional appeal of the figures neutered by their impassive body language.
