tinkering with frames - it's about time.new work. titles.words. exhibition catalogue.thinking about other work projects in the pipeline.time frames. time fragments...
bus station clock [look, no hands]what time is it?summer time.
polaroid of an amended road sign [mended]thinking about it now, might have been the summer of 2008, maybe earlier.it was funny at the time, but there's no need to shout about it.couldn't find my way back there, tried many times in passing.it's not on the map. typical.
street name sign [5 march 2003]
a mug's game
hello reader, this is my all-time favourite mug...
[mug shot]it's a hornsea (lion) mug dating from the 1970s, a design created out of cut-up & collaged newsprint typography. unfortunately, i put this mug in in the microwave one day and after that it became a little bit crazed on the inside, and it was later resigned to a more solitary mug's life in the artist's room.some glimpses of other things i have been pondering on lately...
[shed : stored]
[shack : stacked]
[wood : engraving]i like the idea of living in a rustic cabin in the middle of the woods, but i've been floored by the resolution of this piece. this is another woodwork artwork i started last year. when i realised i would probably never get the opportunity to present it in the right context i (sort of) gave up on it, because its visual aesthetic largely depends upon the neutrality of a white space. i also realised i was making it for no other reason than i wanted (or needed) to, and maybe it doesn't have a particular place to be right now.
[wood, work in progress]some people may deride the clinical whiteness of the typical gallery space, but if art is to have any element of transcendence from the ordinary then perhaps it needs such an environment for its debut into the world of contemporary art, one which is conducive to looking & experiencing firsthand, for the invocation of thoughts in response to the expression of the artist's ideas - or so i once thought. on more than one occasion i have visited a local commercial gallery to see a 'publicised' exhibition only to find the work has already disappeared from the white walls (sold out).interestingly, a few months back i bought (quite by chance) a secondhand copy of robert smithson's collected writings, and shortly thereafter i read this:A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world. A vacant white room with lights is still a submission to the neutral. Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going through a kind of esthetic convalescence. They are looked upon as so many inanimate invalids, waiting for critics to pronounce them curable or incurable. The function of the warden-curator is to separate art from the rest of society. Next comes integration. Once the work of art is totally neutralized, ineffective, abstracted, safe, and politically lobotomized it is ready to be consumed by society.[robert smithson, the collected writings]well, that nails the contextual argument to the clinical white wall of a gallery, and it brings new meaning to the term 'art in the community'! - and so art often has to exist independently of these institutional limitations.whatever the context (selling or exhibiting), every artist hopes for a good prognosis on their art (support & encouragement), and hopes their work (of art) has a life of its own. carefully administer a catalogue, an essay, a gallery talk, or a full-on interactive panel discussion, together with some general public engagement at regular intervals, will all keep the art (and the artist) alive and kicking. art's consumers are also art's life savers.however, this leaves me even more befuddled about galleries & exhibitions, and the reasons for making or showing work...this particular work evolved out of some ideas about nature's means of regeneration and renewal, and a form of resurrection or symbolic reverence for something (a life) in the past, with an awareness of a separation from (its) nature heightened by the context. so too a relevance in the use of mundane building materials, respectfully returning them to their natural state. i wanted to recreate the presence or feeling of something (living) to recall the absence (or non-presence) of something (other). i had also spent some time at an old-fashioned woodyard sourcing oak for a family memorial commission, appreciating wood/nature from the tree to the table, as it were.
[wood : blocked]such notions of presence and non-presence are sometimes called hauntological:"the paradoxical state of the spectre, which is neither being nor non-being" (from wikipedia).however, finding a precise definition of hauntological has proven rather difficult. i was interested in the artwork as a sculptural object embodying the spirit of something else, rather than a pictorial representation or illustration of a thing, which is (sometimes) the most literal means of conveying an idea about something.a thing summons up another (non-present, or absent) thing. the absent thing becomes present and affects the meaning of the moment (the experience) and thereby the meaning of other things, for everything is inter-related through time and place, but this sounds like a crazy, oddball place in which someone like me will get "stuck" when making art, much like trying to connect all the dots - some confusion ensues.the internet, as the always-on, social network, curiously also lures us into creating a presence to mark time passing, especially in the sharing of pictures, as if being in the moment - or perhaps more self-knowingly, on trend - drives repeated affectations of instant reminiscences about an everyday event (the now ubiquitous, sun-faded or vignetted photograph, for example - i remember 1978 - it looks just like instagram!). although the social networks' daily updates, annotations and user timelines soon become an archive of our social discourse these life-historical waymarkers appear to direct the travel (and any passing interest) in only one direction - onwards!there is little space for personal recollection, history or a sense of time when it is all too soon buried by the now and the next. paradoxically, this relentless need for nowness also needs quite a lot of our time - so when do we find the time to reflect on & reconnect the now with the accumulating thoughts, ideas and experiences of the past to bring fresh meaning to things? well, most artists try to do this (when they can).i wonder if there is any hauntological significance to the process of 'mediating' a 'subject' for the purpose of making art, as all art has a subject, even if its subject is only itself. the painter mediates his/her choice of subject through graphical marks, gestures in paint, qualities of colour, texture, surface - but are artists mediating experiences or the experience of making the art? (it's just a thought…)does endless theorising about this sort of stuff merely embellish and refine the artwork for presentation to a specific audience? probably.most interestingly, someone i follow on twitter recently wrote in an article, bad language, that words about the art often (need to) come before the emergence of the art:The professionalisation of artistic practice, with its emphasis on artists’ statements and the academic blitzkrieg of the crit, has bound the act of making with that of describing, so that many works of contemporary art seem to enter the world backwards, text-first.[ben street, bad language]street goes on to say that the 'text' is also tantamount to a dress code in the art world, a protocol for professional inclusion, and a critical contribution to any discourse on contemporary art. ongoing discussions about art - between the artists (and the making of their work), their peers, critics & curators, gallerists and collectors - are crucial to audience engagement: the conversation has no absolute beginning or conclusion, it is revisited and revised (by the artist and others), as ideas and thoughts shift in emphasis and meaning, moving us closer to the surface of greater understanding.therefore, presentation and context is important - assuming the art has been made to be exhibited somewhere (and not created in situ in response to a given location/space, which is the other story). sometimes too much stuff (interior architecture, crowds, texts) gets in the way of the experience, but not always (obviously). i saw an art exhibition in a disused industrial space (much like the original freeze exhibition), and although i didn't need a text to experience the work, it was interesting to refer to. often critics and writers illuminate the artists' concerns better, as if (at the very least) two minds are required to consolidate the work as art - and where one confidently leads the way others will surely follow - but to disagree or debate is also a good thing in art.
[wood : wood]the small landscape of my personal art world changed and i am packing up this artwork along with everything else related to my art. the question i have long been pondering was answered. i am thankful to the mug for starting a conversation about purpose and value, although i see i have written too many words, once again.sorry about the thingness thing......
on artworks and two small paintings
the artworks annual exhibition opens this weekend at blackthorpe barn in the heart of rural suffolk. i am one of thirty artists exhibiting new work in this art exhibition.[edit: i would like to mention here of my gratitude for the encouragement and support i have received this year in the continuation of my membership of the artworks group. they will know who they are, and i thank them.]each artworks artist is allocated a space in the barn and here is a small picture of my wall of (very) small paintings.these paintings are very possibly the smallest paintings in the artworks exhibition, and my intention was to produce a series of delicately textured paintings which would require close scrutiny so that the beams (in all their rustic heavyweight charm) did not entirely steal the show.these small paintings are framed in white wood frames (using natural liming wax), floated within extra-deep window mounts to give a degree of separation and independence from the exposed beams and overlapped timbers of the barn's rustic interior architecture.
plain white walls do help to concentrate the gaze when someone happens upon an artwork for the very first time, where there is no background noise to distract from the 'get to know you' conversation (or creating a dialogue as some artists will call it, but a conversation seems much more personable).this series of (very) small paintings combine my rustic style of painting with collage, constructed in many layers to create subtle accents of texture and relief within the surface, minimalist in composition offset by irregular striations and stacks of textured colour, to evoke everyday sensory elements of the rustic and the rural - walls, fences, boundaries, edges, horizon lines, buildings and structures.here is a picture of one of the (very) small paintings on show in the exhibition (minus the picture frame)...
[suffolk pinks, tarmac and straw 2012, 10cm x 10cm)this (very) small painting evokes striated, layered memories of walking, cycling or driving (or sometimes just taking the bus, which is nice) through the suffolk countryside in late summer, of straight roads and stubble fields, the harvest straw and dust as it clusters and clumps by the roadside, of sideways glimpses of traditional 'suffolk pink' farmhouses, sometimes set back from the road behind hedgerows, gates, fences and walls - and wondering (in that brief moment of passing) what it might be like to live there, with those fields as your only neighbours...here is another (very) small painting in the artworks exhibition (again, minus the picture frame)...
[purple sage, potting shed 2012, 10cm x 10cm]sometimes it's the smallest of things that momentarily hold the attention. the textures, colours and aromas in the garden on any given day, a purple-leafed sage in a terracotta pot, the dust, dirt and cobwebs in the shed as you sort through a jumble of odd-sized plant pots, the aroma and texture of compost in your hands as you sow the tiniest of seeds, or the patina of waterlines on the inside of a rain bucket or watering can.these seemingly mundane visual experiences, now insignificant memories, seem to have filtered through when making these small paintings, perhaps to acknowledge some of the humble pleasures of rural life, and to cast away the less pleasing aspects, as things are 'felt' and layered in one's memory, without recourse to a more 'literal' narrative.if there (ever) was an overarching idea, an underlying motive, a subconscious need, it was a need to evoke such sensory memories - in a way which felt authentic, honest and pure, quietly evocative, modest in every way - as a small expression of retreat or escape, back into a small world which i could claim as my own, and from there on in, came the titles.rural life has been an inevitable influence in these (too?) small paintings as i continue to be drawn to the colours and textures of time passing, a humbling antidote to the relentless pursuit of 'perfection' in contemporary life....artworks 13th annual art exhibition8th to 30th september 2012blackthorpe barn, rougham, suffolk (SatNav IP30 9HZ)the artworks exhibition is open daily, 10am to 5pm, from 8th to 30th september 2012.artworks is a professional art group of thirty east anglian artists who organise a showcase exhibition each year at blackthorpe barn. the thirty exhibiting artists in the 2012 exhibition are:Valerie Armstrong, Mike Ashley, Lyn Aylward, Penny Bhadresa, Gillian Crossley-Holland, Helen du Feu, Genista Dunham, Janet french, Chris Gamble, Roger Gamble, John Glover, Jenny Goater, Joss Goddchild, Jazz Green, Lynn Hutton, Alison Jones, Eleonora Knowland, Christine McKechnie, Katie Millard, Elaine Nason, Carol Pask, Anne Paton, Doug Patterson, Ben Platt-Mills, Ursula Kit Price Moss, Lizzie Sanders, Colin Slee, Constance Stubbs, Liz Waugh McManus, Virginia Wright....