Ben frost and popular culture.

Pop art is a movement perpetuated by mass media and pertaining to the language of the external world tangible to the artist. Pop artists drew upon the icons, events and issues current in the world-around-them, from historical moments to the banality of the ever-increasing consumerism of society.

Ben Frost’s artworks comfort all the glorifications and repercussions of mass media, however he lacks the vernacular language of a young Australian artist. Sourcing images and icons not only from an epoch prior to his generation, but also from another country’s culture – completely persuaded by the aesthetics of American popular media. In comparison to artists such Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg his coalescion of images is based purely on retinal excitement and the preconceptions of his medium with a seeming indifference to the narrative of a pop artwork.

Is this lack in cohesion of thought and visualisation an acceptable feeding ground for contemporary artists, or does this simply a case of being a little late?