What is my work about?
This is a difficult question to answer however I am obliged to answer it for college and I have prepared this for my post graduate forum. I make work about what I see and hear around me. Anything goes, everyday stuff that’s mundane or more quirky stuff that catches my interest. I’m interested in the real that looks fictional and the fictional that looks real and the inbetween. I’ve always enjoyed inbetween times such as journeys, there is this lull, no expectations, it’s a bit like time standing still. I’m also drawn to nature and the sublime so I imagine this will feature in my new body of work.
I am interested in the absurd as a political protest (after the Dada artists). Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche. German philosopher (1844 – 1900). I’ve had the poem Anna Blume by Kurt Schwitters on my studio wall since foundation, ‘O beloved of my twenty-seven senses, I love your! – you ye you your, I your, you my. –We? ………You wear your hat upon your feet and walk round on your hands, upon your hands you walk. Halloo, your red dress, sawn up in white pleats……..
I’ve been thinking of the terror of the everyday,‘He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you’.Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146. I’m currently looking at the uncanny, I’m reading Freud’s The ‘Uncanny’ and not finding it very inspiring. Freud uses Hoffmann’s storey The Sand-Man about a boy who goes mad because he is frightened of the sand man taking his eyes, a storey told to him by his nanny, it is interesting, but can it not be just a storey without all this hidden meaning of castration. I’ve also recently re-read ‘the man who mistook his wife for a hat’, by Oliver Sacks. This man had an unusual neurological condition where he lost the cognitive ability to recognise people and objects. He could discern people by distinguishing features or the way they moved. He survived with help from his wife if she laid his clothes out in the usual way he would automatically get dressed or if he could smell food he would automatically eat. He still managed to teach music till he died. ‘Tis strange but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction’. G.G. Byron.
I’m also interested in the sublime of the everyday‘What is this world if full of care we have no time to stand and stare’ Wm Henry Davies, who was a tramp (1871—1940). Can the sublime be achieved at the same time as the uncanny? Possibly with the mirror image or reflection.
I’m also interested in the visual language of formations such as the choreographed synchronised swimming and the red arrows.
Overall I see my work as narritive based visual layers. I’m looking at the construct of the image, thephotocopy and the Tyranny of the page – I don’t like an image to spread to the edge of the page or canvas in a traditional manner. Artists who have worked within the edge are Michael Borremans andAlex Baggaley’s i cycle fatal path.
Within all these areas I am exploring different contexts to create new readings of the familiar.It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them! Friedrich Nietzsche. In 1889 Freidrich Nietzsche exhibited symptoms of insanity, living out his remaining years in the care of his mother and sister until his death in 1900. Is there a philosopher who didn’t go mad?
Artists that I particularly like and which therefore must inform my work are Sophie Calle, Francis Alys. Michael Borremans and Edward Gorey
