More Musings – Bren Head
Tuesday 23rd
One of the nicest things about curating a show, is meeting the artists involved. Today I had the pleasure of meeting Bren Head who came to see the show without the bustle of the (very busy) PV. Bren’s work is in the front gallery space, alongside that of John Wild and Anna Gillespie – and it is work that always provokes a response. From the point of view of a fellow artist, what appeals to me is the close-quarter sense of engagement with a head or face in a state of dissolvement or dissolution or ‘decay’ through the appeal of process and surface attention. We chatted for a while about the nature of creating this kind of work – a building-up and destructing process, carried out over a long period of time, allowed to evolve, before it arrives at a natural state of resolution that the maker recognises. It’s not the kind of work that one might think, ‘I’ll just do this, and that, and then it will be finished’; I read somewhere an interview with Euan Uglow, who said that for him, a painting would just ‘stop’ – although Bren’s work is very different, there is such an element of chance and instinct involved that each piece eventually achieves a sense for her that it does something that she recognises, and that’s when to leave it alone for a while to see if it asks for anything else later on.
Bren’s work has something in common with Anna Gillespie’s, and sharply contrasts with John Wild’s. Visually, it’s a striking wall. In terms of conceptual content, the relationships and contrasts are all there – one could see it as a brief representation of the human condition; depression, decay, paranoia – all in the mix, along with an uplifting dosage of spirituality.
Continued in the next post.
