One of the most exciting ways my work has developed in the last year is that it has become something like a parasite- each piece breeding new ideas.
When I was painting buildings, the process was very literal, taking photos, playing with composition and materials, but using a photographic image which rendered my own imagination to go down particular pathways. A translation of idea into form that was representational.
As my work has moved into other worlds of abstraction, expressionism, minimalism, constructivism (all unconsciously I have to say) I have arrived at a space somehow in this work that in its abstraction allows for an opening up of possibility for creativity. Structures and paradoxical landscapes emerged out interventions on photographs, fascinating patterns revealed themselves to me. Rather fittingly in Caixa in Madrid was this quote I found after having photographed the chamber of mirrors and geometric shapes in the underneath of the building by Herzog De Mauron which then became paintings;
” Evoking the notion of space allows us to break free of the linearity of language and writing. In the idea of space thought finds an exploration of its plurality and dynamism. ” CAIXA
I did a talk at ZAP last year as these works emerged and talks about threads&materiality, screens, feminism,possibility&transformation &evolution of works. You can watch that here. And am going to post some images up as well showing the steps of evolution.
Every medium I use is as symbolic as it is relevant. Photographs capture a sense of reality, but a distanced reality. Paint and drawing portray disparity between the imagined and what is real. Embroidery reminds us of the human and emotional connection between environment and landscape and of course of reparation.
I also read this quote which resonated; ‘No-one (Freud) announced, lives in the real world. We occupy a space of our own creation- a collage compounded of bits and pieces of actuality arranged into a design determined by our internal perceptions, our hopes, our fears, our memories and our anticipations.’ W. Galin. Feelings 1979.
Having put the exhibition up and seeing my own journey, I reflect that I have progressed fast and far in my practice. There has been a slowing down of this frenzy of creativity now as always happens after you put on an exhibition (except that actually I am still very busy with show,zap etc) . I have instead been reading about this new art world of abstraction, constructivism etc that are part of a language that has emerged in my works as I have developed in my practice and a place. I have come to inhabit. Trying to find words to explain these abstracted landscapes to others as well as part of the exhibition. I have had to write press releases for the show, rewrite my artists statement, to unpick and rebuild, what I was and what I am now and why I went on the journey To the Light.
I found this by Jan Verwoert; “Abstraction is the emergence of an artistic language that seemed to free itself on subject matter to concentrate instead on content. Abstraction is an essential expression of an idea or feeling rather than a representation of an object from the real world. Instead of reflecting the world, one strives to add to it, to remake it.” The last sentence sums it up for me.
In the last year, I went from rebuilding spaces to reimagining spaces from architectural sources and in some ways that made so much logic as I discovered this; “Abstraction was at once a product of periods of profound unease and disquiet, in times when the political, intellectual and social situation called for it. It also held out the promise of redemption through remove and contemplation ” (Wilhelm Worringer)…very apt.
