macro & micro

Wilried Agricola has kindly included my project on the camp at Rivesaltes in his Shoah Film Collection.

For those of you who have been directed from his site: Draft Title Shoah, please click on ‘Reverse Order’ at the top of the blog. Post number 1 gives a brief history of the camp, following that are sporadic bursts of information which put my videos made at Rivesaltes in the context of The Holocaust.

My videos made at the camp can be found here:

http://www.jonathan-moss.com/moving-images.html

Wilfried’d site can be found here:

http://dts.engad.org/shoah-feature.html

http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=11547

I’ve decided to paint 20 or so layers of primer on the canvasses – sanding them down in between coats, so that eventually I will have a mirror-like surface. After that who knows what will evolve?

I started this afternoon, it was quite meditative and fitted into my normal day-to-day chores quite well: chopping wood, charging the fires, cooking leek and potato soup, making applications . . .

It occurred to me whilst methodically applying the primer that it is four years since I finished my course at the RCA in printmaking – and I started to reflect on how my work and outlook has moved on.

For me working in the printmaking dept was a revelation – the teaching, based on an ethos of working in multi-media, had a profound effect on me. Within the dept, as long as students included some element of printing in the process of making, anything was acceptable, from sculpture and performance to video.

Something Chris Orr said to me in a tutorial once has stayed with me as well, I’m not sure if it’s his catch-phrase though: “The work must be shit-hot!”. It is so true – every image I release into the world shouldn’t just be acceptable, it must succeed in every way.

Being there was such a buzz and such an inspirational environment in which to work.

I was invited to stay on for a three year course and was very tempted. I spoke to one of the tutors, who is coincidently a friend of my wife’s, and she persuaded me that it was not necessarily the only route for me to take. I have a young family and a great life here in the Pyrenees – it would have meant living in dodgy digs in London, being broke and missing my family all the time.

My work has moved on since my time there – I was stuck in a rut, now I feel free to create whatever I wish, be it sound-art, video, painting, collagraphs . . . it all co-exists and feeds into each other. The camp at Rivesaltes also acts as a powerful context for what are basically landscapes.

The exhibitions and screenings I’ve been part of since have been really exciting, but as my mother-in-law points out they don’t make much money. Sometimes it’s hard to understand it’s not about the money (even though I do earn a living from the sales of my paintings).

Back to the here and now . . . my video camera screen has broken, so I need to replace it, also I need a more powerful computer and faster hard-drive to enable me to continue creating videos without the added stress of technical problems. Four years ago I had a sale in my studio and sold over a hundred old paintings and prints for 50E each – I need to do that again.

http://www.jonathan-moss.com

Work’s been hectic recently – been editing videos for two screeings coming up in February – one at The Firestation in Windsor which will run concurrently with a photographic exhibition by Bleach Box and the other a screening organised by Ottica TV at Better Bankside next to Tate Modern.

Every year I apply to 700is Reindeerland, a video exhibition in Iceland, every year I am rejected and I’m not sure why – what I make is the sort of thing they’re looking for and I’ve shown with artists who have been successful with their applications – one of life’s mysteries . . . the point of this is a positive one: this year they are showing a still from all the applicants in a touring show in Iceland. So, the effort applying was worth it, one of the venues is CIA – Center of Icelandic Art in Reykjavík – wouldn’t it be great to visit?

I now feel a new chapter in my creativity starting – I’ve been making sound, video and editing for months now. My studio has been too cold to paint so this morning I moved Louis and Emilie’s toys out of the way on the ground floor of our house (can’t really call it a lounge as it’s just one big open space) and set up 16 canvasses, primer and some brushes.

What am I going to do? No idea, but it’s a start.

I hope Louis and Emilie will understand when they get home!

http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=11547

http://www.jonathan-moss.com/index.html