So, to explain how I got to work on this commission (I love to deconstruct these things for others, I was always hungry for it myself and never got enough of the ‘how?’ factor) – I got an email in April from the Head of Participation at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG for short), Helen, who had seen my work, looked me up online and invited me in for an informal chat to discuss working together. I met with her and the Head of Education, and we had coffee over an informal presentation by me on my work and approach. Then Helen told me about the John Lyons commission which is a three year programme, of which this is the second.
Last year the lead artist was Faisal Abdu’Allah and the exhibition he and the collective produced was Chasing Mirrors in the Studio Galleries. They were now considering who they could work with this year, and did I have any ideas? I immediately felt an affinity with the project for many reasons but was taken aback at the possibility of making figurative work. Then looking more closely at what had been done and talking with Helen I realised they were very open to alternative approaches to portraiture, with the focus on identity and I understood why they had approached me.
I wandered through the galleries and then went away and thought about it, walked it through on the downs and was struck with an idea, so here are some extracts from the first part of my proposal, ‘Concept + context’ :
‘ My arts practice is very influenced by Sufi philosophy and the idea of presencing the inner world of the individual within a collective context. Given this, I am inspired by the concept of taking the contested prohibition of the representation of human and animal forms in the more traditional arts of Islam as a creative departure point for a contemporary work. I would do this in order explore both visual and non-visual means of alternative representation, enabling the participants of the project to depict portraits of the inner, or ‘Unseen’ self.
The idea of the ‘Unseen’ does not focus on the idea of disenfranchisement of minority groups, (though it may be read as such) but on presencing those aspects of self within all of us that are normally hidden or not perceived due to the predominance of figurative visual culture above all other forms of expression.
Creative solutions to the ideological restrictions within Islamic art mentioned above, which was rooted in the desire to discourage idolatry, create a sense of transcendent beauty and focus the individual on a singular, unified source of devotion, have resulted in centuries of sublime architectural and artistic practice which makes primary use of Arabic script through calligraphic quotations, geometrical forms and extraordinary tessellated mirroring systems (which I have had the experience of visiting in mosques and palaces in Iran).
I am interested in how ideology has shaped the way we represent and perceive the human form and how language can both express and conceal who we are as human beings within social contexts.’
This idea seemed to resonate with them and also excites me even though i don’t yet know what it is going to produce or how the collective will react to it ..a good place to start.
‘When you become uncomfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life’ Eckhart Tolle
