Congo 2010, mixed media collagraph on paper on canvas, 5" x 5" x 1.5"'Congo' is another very small work on canvas. I like the idea that it should be experienced as a small fragment, a precious last offering. In very minimalist terms, the central stripe could symbolise a path through a forest. Felled trees, stripped bark, planed wood, stacked planks, the dirt tracks of intensive forest clearing, could all be echoed in the texture and grain of the surface. This small canvas is one of a new series based on colour values and other visual associations or narratives, aka symbolic, reductionist iCons, partly geographical, partly cultural... my prospective virtual journeys around the planet.
[detail of Congo]This photograph shows a scene of intensive deforestation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This pillaging of the world's natural resources is central to the debate on climate change. The impact is seen in the immediate ecological environment, disrupting the natural biodiversity of life. As the landscape is physically altered the exposed soil is impacted by changing weather, removing vital nutrients, the rainfall and wind create soil erosion, the alternating extremes of drought to flood damage the environment even further... and so it goes on.If only trees could talk...
The British artist, Angela Palmer, recently installed a series of vast tree roots and stumps in London's Traflagar Square, to highlight the issues surrounding deforestation. According to the artist's own website she 'made several field trips to a commercially logged primary rainforest in Ghana' - surely a footprint or two of dirty carbon traces there? The selected trees (all of which were apparently naturally 'felled' after storms) were painstakingly shipped to the UK for the art installation. The exhibit was later transferred to Copehagen to coincide with the Earth Summit in December 2009. Oh, the tragic irony of this monumental statement on climate change... You can read more about the Ghost Forest project here.
In 2009, another British artist, Tania Kovats, created a ceiling installation out of a 17m high wafer-thin section of a 200 year old oak tree for London's Natural History Museum, in honour of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday and as a homage to his tree of life drawing - a now significant doodle mapping out this ideas on the origins of life. The oak tree was carefully selected (then very much alive) from sustainable woodlands on Longleat Estate (they planted 200 new sapling trees to replace it - that'll be another two hundred years). You can watch a video of Tania Kovat's Tree here. I quite like Kovat's moving meadow artwork (a meadow on a barge) but salami slicing a healthy tree to adorn a ceiling in honour of Darwin's idea seemed a little extravagant...
Yet another British artist, Anya Gallaccio, has created installations out of uprooted and felled trees that are relocated and reconstructed within the gallery space. She only works with trees (and their attendant tree surgeons) that are due for the final chop - often indigeonous species such as oak and chestnut. Gallaccio's exhibit for the 2003 Turner Prize (in my opinion, one of the better years) included life-size bronze casts of trees adorned with slowly rotting fruits. Gallaccio's works transcend their organic materality and process, to signify the essential temporality of all living (and dead) things. In an interview in ArtForum magazine in 2008, she said: I’m interested in basic, rather banal stuff, like how big trees are and how we relate to them physically. [...] I’m a little bit terrified and overwhelmed by nature. My curiosity is more morbid than celebratory.'If only walls could talk...And lastly... of the recent Turner Prize 2010 shortlist announcement. I chuckled when I heard sound artist Susan Philipsz (when interviewed about her Turner Prize nomination) exclaim: 'I couldn't believe my ears'. I doubt it will win the hearts of the people; it's a public exhibition and there won't be much to look at in a white space... My money's on De La Cruz, I like the irony... Read brief profiles on the four nominated Turner Prize 2010 artists here.
on getting out, more or less
I have been quietly working on more small, intaglio print canvases (if that is not a oxymoron in artistic terms)...Here are some artfully stacked up in the studio.
I have had four of these small canvases accepted for a show in the summer, NCA 2010 - quietly chuffed as I thought at first it would be a risk to submit some lightweight small works rather than a large canvas or two, but out of 596 submissions they've selected just 69 works for the final exhibition.
I now have to work on my artist statement for the illustrated catalogue. So firstly, what are these little things, and how are they made...? Below shows one intaglio print as it is collaged onto the canvas...
They first look like this one, below (printed on hahnemule paper). I think I will keep this one as a conventional flat print, but the others begin their transition into a more 3D object...
some more prints... decidedly green and grey...
Why prints and not paintings? It has something to do with the initial fabrication of the matrix (and the resulting multiples) which can be subtly transformed each time - altering by sanding, incising, cutting and pasting - so no two prints are the same... and a smooth sheet of paper is infinitely mouldable, thereby the altered print becomes a tactile object...I have been jotting down a few words to explore further my idea of virtual world travels inspired by colours (read more about my colour values here)... in turn creating a faux object, a fragment, symbol, souvenir, memento, a remnant, an abstract relic or an impression of a location. I have another twelve or so virtual destinations to explore this week...I sometimes feel I am just talking to a brick wall... but nature sees every crevice as a potential growing opportunity... yep, I probably do need to get out more...
[buddleia, brick wall and drainpipe]
[apple tree in city building lot]...As an addendum, I recalled today the time that I sold off the majority of my possessions (the usual bric-a-brac - vintage clothes, lots of kitsch, retro stuff, even two director's chairs and a fake palm tree) at a Brighton car boot sale, in order to buy a car.I kept back one one thing - Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa' as a jigsaw puzzle (it was a feat to complete and was suitably framed). It was a trashy souvenir of sorts, a personal reminder of student digs and student days - but different to the holiday souvenir, one that is manufactured in duplicate to fulfil a desire to take something home 'unique'... most of those souvenirs end up at the memorial service to forgotten holidays: the car boot sale.
a cake lover's take on the general election 2010
I like a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake... The frenzied electioneering in the UK has induced some cake-related silliness today... the general election 2010, according to the world of cakes......
[fruitcake]A good old-fashioned, solid as a house/brick fruitcake, equally at home in a steel-worker's lunchbox or the Queen's garden party - a cake that exclaims honesty and decency - a family cake. I am sure Tony Benn is partial to a slice of fruitcake. Douse it with some scotch and put a fancy, tartan ribbon around this beast and you'll have a veritable Dundee, add a whitewash of fancy icing and it's a Christmas cake, or it's a wedding cake, an anniversary cake - diversity is part of its charm. This is a cake for all seasons - it's seen the best of times, the worst of times and promises to sustain us in the future - but it is, if I may say, just a little bit too brown for my liking right now.....
[victoria sponge cake]Ugh, the insipid-looking Victoria Sponge! It makes me think of my schooldays - such as domestic science lessons, where we had to learn the contents of the utensils drawer before progressing to the mixing bowl. A light dusting of icing sugar hides any irregularity in the baking. It's all in the cuts with a Victoria sponge; very precise and measured - when times are tough don't expect a generous slice of gateau. This cake doesn't travel well and pales into insignificance when seen next to its exotic European cousins. This is a cake that knows its place - usually at coffee mornings, charity events and country markets. If you look closely, you'll see that within a day or so the jam nearly always turns a little bit brown......
[lemon cheesecake]But... cakes don't always have to be this way - it's time to rethink what cake is. Introducing the fresh-faced, zesty, lemon cheesecake - much devoured at middle-class dinner parties. It doesn't look or taste like a traditional cake, and some of it is clearly unbaked - but I can forgive that. This is a cake that you have to eat politely with a fork, and perhaps with a glass of something sparkling. If you think the fruitcake is dowdy and the Victoria sponge reminds you of the old days, a slice of lemon cheesecake promises something new. Refreshing on the palate after a heavy meal, it is best served lightly chilled. I like cheesecake for breakfast. My only issue with cheesecake is that it doesn't keep very long, but everything about it tastes good......
[carrot cake]Carrot cake; a cake that just might be good for you. It's a little bit nutty at times but at heart it's a democratic, caring, sharing cake - and it doesn't mind being baked in a square tin. On the contrary, when it is served up as smaller squares it means there's always enough to go around. Flavour is more important than looks with a carrot cake, but celebrity endorsement will give it some chic credibility. I like to make my own version, with the addition of some dried chillies, because I'm a bit of a rebel... (see also courgette cake, a slightly greener version)...
[cupcakes]Then, there are the plethora of silly cupcakes that turn up at every party event. Always entertaining, they spark conversation and add colour to the cake table, but no one will admit to actually liking them. Well, are they a cupcake, a fairy cake or just a half-baked muffin with a crazy hairdo?...
[battenburg cake]Battenburg cake, what the heck - is it a British or a German cake? This is two cakes regimentally spliced together with a sticky marzipan coating. This is a cake that harks back to the days of the Empire - it has no nutritional value and my big issue with the segregated colour is that it makes me feel a bit queezy - definitely one to avoid....
[jaffa cakes]Lastly, there are jaffa cakes, which aren't really cakes at all, but relentlessly aspire to be at the big cake table. They are stale, stodgy biscuit imposters that believe with a slab of orange-flavoured jelly and fake chocolate topping they look the cakey business. No one takes these cakes seriously, and, after eating just one of them, you will suddenly feel quite thirsty......