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SUGAR AND SPICE 22 AUGUST-4TH SEPTEMBER, DEVON HOUSE, ST KATHARINE DOCKS E1 @PLASTICP1, @STKATS

TUESDAY, 26 JULY 2016
Being not terribly technical or sure how these things work I find myself amused/bemused that I suddenly seem to have a bunch of Russian fans on blogger. Last week over 100 Russians read my post in which I shared my paper for Plastic Propaganda’s Both Ends of Madness symposium…. or one Russian read it over 100 times? Who knows?
The choice of my image as the picture for the Plastic Propaganda publicity for “Sugar and Spice” is a lovely compliment, and I am delighted to have been chosen. And they seem to know me so well, because it made me feel so cosy and positive towards them and my new membership that I have volunteered to help with e publicity. It is a collective so everyone needs to pull together.

It is also an attempt to become a bit more knowledgeable and functional with e communication: John Brenan has put together a great plan for how to grow the eprofiles, so now we need to do it.

My plinth is made

nice and easy with the sun shining this week, just need to give the transparencies one last edit and check though, and the piece a good old polish and its ready


and the two paintings are ready:


On the new work side of things I have been scribbling some ideas for some more lost girl paintings, nothing sufficiently developed to share here, and at such an early stage it would feel like a jinx.

I went to check out Parallax Art Fair at the weekend in preparation for the Fair in October, it was interesting talking to some of the stall holders. I have two submissions in at the moment and am waiting for replies, and the proposal for the Fulham private show is still awaiting confirmation, and have a had a bit of a buzz about other things that may come to something in Autumn. It could be this Autumn is going to be really busy….well with a bit of luck.

“Sugar and Spice” will be at Devon House, St Katharine Docks, London E1 from 22 August to 4th September with Meet the Artists events on 23 and 31 August 6-8. So come along to see it, even if you have to catch a plane from Russia!


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This is the paper I  presented to the symposium at Both Ends of Madness yesterday:
It is a discussion of my approach to my painting She Walks Slowly into the Leith without a Boatman to guide Her


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Phoenix Egg


My work usually starts with a narrative and through the process of creating a single work, or a series of works that narrative is distilled. So what happens when the narrative is disappearing? When the central character of the story is experiencing a process of disintegration? There is a risk in that becoming the narrative itself. A risk I have explored here and am still exploring in what is turning out to be a new series.

There are characters to introduce, Padma, my mother in law who is 92, and has a life experience that crossed oceans and continents both literally and symbolically, a child of Sri Lanka then Ceylon, in the British Empire. She was educated at a time when schools operated a sort of religious hierarchy, in a form of systemised discrimination. She learnt, as a result to rebel internally, and adopted schemas which meant all her life until recently she has managed the duality of external conformity combined with a strong internal resistance. She first came to Britain in the 1950s as a nurse in a TB isolation hospital and had great adventures some of which she still remembers. She later came to Scotland to follow her husband’s career and training in Perth, crossing the Leith in Edinburgh, as a  wife and mother, a period that now draws a blank.

And then, there is Mark Rothko, (my sometime teenage goth crush), who created colourfields, and interestingly to me, set out to create a feeling of closing in. I saw these works for the first time when I was seventeen, and broken and lost in the heart of my first experience of grief. For me the Seagram images were absorbing, and gave me a sense of sinking into the dark space created by them, a chance to peacefully hold grief in my hands and examine it.

(Here I had a red Rothko Seagram slide form the Tate website which is allowed for a free symposium but not social media, so not here)

Rothko was also influenced by Jung, a wise old Grandad with a bit part… and the way in which mythology provides us with archetypes for understanding. And that is where I have gone for the landscape and symbolic content of the painting. The River Lethe (spelt Leith here to reference Scotland and Padma’s tendencies to sit in the eddies of memories which confirm her independence). A tributary of the river Styx, where swallowing the water was said to wash away memories.

Plastic Propaganda turned out to be a character in this story too. Working with indigo pigment in preparation for Sugar and Spice I was drawn to starting works with raw pigment as a way of pulling together my painting and object making which tends to start with repurposed objects, repurposed objects which have a symbolic meaning either in their original form or through the process of intervention, so referenceing Beuys rather than Duchamp . So why not repurpose pigments? A pigment which has an intimate symbiosis with intercontinental relationships and the history of Colonialism, in particular with India, the Bengal Indigo rebellion and its role in the independence movement that in turn allowed Sri Lanka a more peaceful exit.

While playing with the indigo I discovered its variability in texture and tone when mixed with various oil painting media. I did attempt rabbit skin glue, like Rothko, but found the pigment clumped and formed unsatisfying surfaces.


The indigo dissolved more evenly in oil painting media with a lot of help from a pestle and mortar. The process of using the indigo has been to build pull back and rebuild surfaces to create that space at the same time as allowing for the introduction of symbolic iconography including in the media itself. The surfaces have variations in the media used for application, but in this piece unlike other works I have created using indigo, the final varnish is uniform to create a sense of looking through a single plain, in a way creating a separation from the events happening, a framing of ourselves as viewers.

So when I started to create this work

to try to gain an understanding of what Padma was experienceing and to create a space for my own grief I wanted to create dark spaces where you might wander and be lost.  To create a river Lethe where it was possible to wander endlessly in the half disintigrated memories, and the absence of a guide for her so that rather than reaching the other side by gliding over the surface in a boat letting the waters settle behind her, she is lost in the vastness of it all.

 

In Padma’s dementia there are moments, sometimes days of lucidity, and these often correspond with a rationally expressed wish to die.  this is the light in the painting originating in what is left of her shadowy brain in the mists.  And eventually that will be the ending of this story, for now though, she still wanders and we still experiece of the slow grief that the family feels for someone who is both here and not.

 

“Give me the waters of the Lethe that numb the heart, if they exist I will still not have the power to forget you.”  Ovid

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And then earlier in the week

So I went down to Fulham earlier this week to see about this solo show in a private location, near the river and Fulham Palace. The river was silky that day and there were plenty of boats on it.  I will wait until early Auguat to get confirmation of the dates.  I was invited to apply for Parralax Art Fair applied and got in so will be showing there in October.  I plan to pop along to the summer one this weekend.

And last night when I presented my paper, the first time in a long time and it was nerve wracking but a good thing to have done. Plastic Propaganda are proving to be the platform I need to give me thepush I need to do some more challenging things. They are also a lovely friendly group.

As promised I went along to North End Road and happily can confirm that despite the weak pound prices seemed pretty stable in the market, including plenty of European produce.

The shop £12.50
9 large vine tomatoes, 1.5 large broccoli heads, 2 sweet corn cobs, 2 large aubergine( fancy striped ones), 8 big onions, 9 big bananas, 3 bunches of spring onions, 5 garlic bulbs, 430g button mushrooms, 24 nectarines, 2 honeydew melons, 4 small cucumbers. Pretty good value and all nice produce.


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TAKING ADVICE FROM GRAYSON PERRY @OPENARTSPACES @PLASTICP1 @NORTHENDROAD
Taking the advice of Grayson Perry to take every opportunity that comes along sometimes leaves me feeling a bit exhausted and disenchanted…and then…

Sometimes when you are just wondering if it was worth taking an opportunity, something unexpected comes out of it that makes you realise that maybe it was.

So over the last few years I have applied for a number of open submissions, to get into some and be refused for others, oftentimes refused for ones I realllyyyyyy wanted, and that can be disheartening. However in the back of my mind I have had the above Grayson Perry advice, and little by little things begin to build. This week I have been lucky enough to be offered opportunities rather than seeking them out. I have been offered a small solo show in a private space, to commence this summer, tomorrow I will be going to see the venue, which sits on the River Thames close to Fulham Palace. This offer came as a result of participating in Open Art Spaces, and I had been disappointed by the footfall, but then there was that one person. And the result gives me the opportunity to bring all my river and transatlantic works together in a meaningful context.

I also received an invitation to participate in a Chelsea based art fair Parallax, and will be spending the rest of the day filling in forms for that.

An open submission also lead to my delight at my acceptance to artist collective Plastic Propaganda, which in turn has lead to more exhibiting opportunities and participation in next weeks symposium and having my work as the poster piece for the next show. So slowly slowly seeds that have been planted are starting to peek up through the surface, and all the hard work gives me the chance to raise my profile and grow. And with this comes the sense that I am freeing up in what I produce. So after a period of wondering if I was mistaken, a few small things come together that are heartening and give me the energy to persist. Not so much to persist in making which has its own intrinsic satisfaction: Rather to go on taking every opportunity, and making opportunities.

While in SW6 tomorrow I will pop along to North End Road Market to keep my promise about tracking food prices in a post Brexit context.


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I have been working and reworking, adding and taking away from this surface to achieve the perfect combination of matt vs shine. Creating a vast space to be lost in and a darkness which contains moments of light.

 I am still working within the frame work of Padma’s dementia and how some of her feeling of lostness relate to her  place in twenty first century Britain.  How the longing she feels for Sri Lanka is nuanced and bound up with her longing for her proir more complete and certainly more independent former self.  It interests me that the blocks of memory she misses are from her least independent self. She remembers with joy coming here as a nurse on a great adventure in the 1950s.  She does not remember coming with her children to Scotland to join her husband for his studies. Her most joyous memories, when she achieves them are those of herself at her most independent or rebellious, including as the child standing up to the colonial teachers in her school.


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