Trapped Batman

‘Trapped Batman’ by Simon Monk, is a series of six paintings, each depicting a plastic Batman model imprisoned by a succession of everyday items such as parcel tape, string and polythene. Do these scenarios represent a great hero held at bay by gigantic paraphernalia, the playtime set-ups of a kid enamoured of super-villains or the inventions of a bored fanboy office worker playing with his stationery supplies and his desk mascot? Whichever of these instances rings true, if any, it is clear that these paintings, like Simon Monk’s previous work, represent the absurd meeting of two worlds: the fantastic and the banal.