John Kiki has been a prolific painter for more than 55 years and his solo exhibition Infanta at the Yare Gallery in Great Yarmouth in 2022 was a big success.
It was during this exhibition that photographer Pete Huggins and former ncas Chair, Keith Roberts snuck in and grabbed a couple of hours of film in the gallery. This formed the basis for a short 30-minute video.
The video covers the origins and development of the Infanta ‘motif’ that John Kiki has been exploring for over 50 years in more than 100 paintings. It discusses how the motif, derived from Velásquez’s Las Meninas, has been constantly elaborated and reimagined by the artist and examines the complex history of John’s figurative painting practice and his remarkable reworkings of his own earlier works.