Something?s happening

The illustration is of an object I brought at a craft fair in Hackney City Farm. Unfortunately didn’t get the name of the designer/maker. It is a little bigger than a matchbox and is made out of wood, which has then been painted and varnished.

Prison. Black hole. Underground. Stair-less. Door-less. Viewing box. Captivity. Room. Solitary. Void. Home.

It reminded me of early Tim Burton films, and of Hayao Miyazaki – Howl’s Moving Castle, as well as Emily Dickinson’s poem One need not be a chamber to be haunted.

Couldn’t resist making an illustration of it with a new watercolour set. It’s the first time I have used watercolour in about 10 years although I have been playing with ink this year. The illustration looks like it could have been done in any painting medium other then watercolour! More water needed… had fun though.

My life drawing has become too safe I need to challenge myself. That’s my reasoning in treating myself to the watercolours. Not because the paint box opens and unfolds to reveal 12 tiny paint pans each individually wrapped like sweets.

Went to Adrian Ghenie’s exhibition at the Haunch of Venison. Decided it was wiser to buy a book rather than steal a painting. Yes another book.

It feels like the canvases are covered by marks rather than the surface being covered by a composition. Every square inch could be a separate painting, each filled with beautiful marks. The smudging and merging make parts feel alive, as if that part is just about to slip off the canvas. The quest to capture and question evil. Dystopian worlds and figures. The style is sophisticated yet playful. Lush.

I have recently watched the film Never let me go (2010), directed by Mark Romanek, based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s (2005) novel with same title. The story is of a dystopian world where human clones are created solely to donate their organs until they ‘complete’.

What was most chilling, was how normal it all seemed to them. Orphaned from conception, with a predestined and cruel fate. Their resistance seemed almost half-hearted. What will be will be. Every shot was incredible. Brilliant film and book.

I wonder if my interest in dystopia (particularly literature), influences my recent works. Dystopian (and a couple of post apocalyptic) influences – an excuse for a list:

We, (1921), Yevgeny Zamyatin

Brave New World, (1932), Aldous Huxley

Animal Farm, (1945), George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four, (1949), George Orwell

I Am Legend (1954) Richard Matheson

Lord of the Flies, (1954), William Golding

The Death of Grass, (1956) John Christopher

A Clockwork Orange, (1962), Anthony Burgess

Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981) Alistair Gray

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) Margaret Atwood

Cloud Atlas (2004) David Mitchell

Never Let Me Go (2005) Kazuo Ishiguro

Kathy’s final words (if you don’t want to know look away now) in the final scene from Never let me go:

“I come here and imagine that this is the spot where everything I’ve lost since my childhood is washed out. I tell myself, if that were true, and I waited long enough then a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field and gradually get larger until I’d see it was Tommy. He’d wave. And maybe call. I don’t know if the fantasy go beyond that, I can’t let it. I remind myself I was lucky to have had any time with him at all. What I’m not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we’ve lived through, or feel we’ve had enough time”.

The New Lights Exhibition Private View went very well, very busy. The Mercer Gallery is a beautiful building, and Harrogate very pretty. The standard of the works was really impressive. There was a huge range of painting styles and subject matter all of which worked well together. Basically the whole exhibition was really well organised and curated. Lots of exhibiting artists attended and it was great to meet them. Exhibiting artists were given badges so that made the whole thing a lot easier. I had some good feedback about my work, which is always good. Admittedly having my photo taken was a little frightening; I much prefer to be the other end of the camera!

Nat Quinn was awarded the Valeria Sykes Prize, really beautiful paintings with intricate surfaces.

I spent yesterday going through a backlog of emails and opportunity listings. Today I am going to my studio to start a new painting. I am wearing fresh clean painting clothes and Ipod is charged and ready (a day of P J Harvey and Bon Iver I think).

This evening I am meeting with the workshop leader of the Urban Craft Club and another volunteer to discuss new project – pleased to be part of it again. Also this week, attending what looks to be an interesting talk organised by Artquest and Film London at the Whitechapel Gallery – ‘At its core, this discussion asks the question: are you always an artist’. Additionally I have to go and see Adrian Ghenie’s new work at the Haunch of Venison and try to resist the desire to steal one.

I am going now and I am going to paint.

Went to see The Metamorphosis a dance-theatre adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novella at the Royal Opera House. I haven’t read it so I can’t compare but was really impressed. The story is of a man who wakes to find he has turned into an insect. It was frustrating to see the breakdown of communication when a new language was introduced, that of the insect. That of assumed difference. The despair and isolation of the transformation from man to insect was mirrored through the music and dance, which was both beautiful and disconcerting.

Was particularly struck by the dream scene where the sister and brother (the man going through metamorphosis) dance in separate rooms. Different moves same dance. There seemed to be a duality, a coming of age. Through the girls ballet there was a representation of the struggle of puberty. Through the man’s contemporary dance there was a representation of his realisation of the situation, a surrendering. The man finally accepts the non-acceptance surrounding him and leaves.

This text is by Aldous Huxley (1954) from his essay The doors of perception [1] which I am forever returning to:

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies – all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. (HUXLEY 1994, p.3)

[1] HUXLEY, A. 1994. The doors of Perception, London: Flamingo.

Here are a couple of articles about New Lights Valeria Sykes Prize looking forward to meeting other short listed artists on Thursday.

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/lifestyle/the-arts/art/bright_future_for_visual_art_in_the_north_1_3779137

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/leisure/exhibitions/9255902.North_Yorkshire_artists_shortlisted_for_new_nothern_art_prize/