Sometimes what feels like the impossible can actually happen….
I have finished a painting. A painting that I began just before I lost my studios and Core Gallery 3months ago. It has been a long drawn out process and the 2nd longest time it has ever taken me to complete a painting. The painting itself is a reflection on the riots in the summer. A reflection of society ripping itself apart. Of human damage. Of all the things people have invested time , energy and love, being smashed to bits and set on fire. Unhappiness breeding unhappiness. n it was an unsettling time for everyone. London, where I was, as they had initially broken out I cycled through the one in Peckham. The tension was of course palpable. Gangs congregated in front of my house, with headscarf’s and helmets covering their faces and made it impossible to leave my home- afraid of what could happen if I stayed and unable to leave either as either side of me were riots. No-one can really explain it, not in the language of journalism, sociology, government rhetoric or psychology. We cannot explain completely away such pivotal loaded significant moments in history.
The painting is of course of Reeves Corner in Croydon. Which has been part of a series I have been making since the beginning of the year called Into the Wild. Recording manmade and natural disasters, the ripping apart of communities. The losses that are felt can feel huge but then slowly begins the task of reparation. I have often written about the reparative gestures I make through paint, through embroidery. The humanity, that I hope to bring back to a traumatic, barren situation, I hope to at the same time bring back beauty, pathos, relevance and in some ways commemorate that which is lost.
The last year there were many reasons that I almost was these buildings. I was certainly ripped apart. I made a wrong decision about someone and nearly died for it. My work if you see it is not a portrayal of me but at the same time (and never consciously so) symbolically marks aspects of my own experiences, ones which I can certainly empathise with. It wasn’t for nothing that I was interested in devastated landscapes and wondered how humanity, how survival prevailed. How one could relive a life that looked like it could have beauty and hope within it.
Then of course, a further disaster struck by losing Core Gallery, which weakened the foundations again. Yet amongst those ashes, after the trauma of losing a studio and a community over night as so beautifully written about in Kate Murdoch’s blog
I realised that all those disasters, they had strengthened and defined my future could also be extremely positive. That I had freed myself from damaging people, from damaging places and that actually my community was all around me. Beyond the walls of our studios, those many artists, those many friends,who held me up. That, within my work, there was reparation, not just for me in its peaceful sanctity and pursuit, but in my experience it gives some beauty back to those who have lost sight of it.
I remember a friend at the time, as we left the exodus of the studio, telling me how this space I ( and so many others) had worked so hard at, that people wanted to be part of, had changed his life. I don’t repeat this out of arrogance (it was the most wonderful thing to hear in such a difficult time) , but because as a thank you, to some those people they have been invited to be part of Collectible, the launch show I am co-curating with anchor Annabel Tilley.http://www.zeitgeistartsprojects.com/exhibitions.html
The Zeitgeist ethos is of generosity. The art world I know isn’t about capitalism, about sensationalism, about money. But about Art , the passion for it, the dedication of the pursuit of making art, the glorious viewing of it, the artist led spaces, the artist focused organisations, the AIR Council. Zeitgeists. Tomorrow I move in to our new studios at ASC as ZeitgeistArtsProjects, and feel very lucky indeed.
