Went to Adrian Ghenie’s exhibition at the Haunch of Venison. Decided it was wiser to buy a book rather than steal a painting. Yes another book.
It feels like the canvases are covered by marks rather than the surface being covered by a composition. Every square inch could be a separate painting, each filled with beautiful marks. The smudging and merging make parts feel alive, as if that part is just about to slip off the canvas. The quest to capture and question evil. Dystopian worlds and figures. The style is sophisticated yet playful. Lush.
I have recently watched the film Never let me go (2010), directed by Mark Romanek, based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s (2005) novel with same title. The story is of a dystopian world where human clones are created solely to donate their organs until they ‘complete’.
What was most chilling, was how normal it all seemed to them. Orphaned from conception, with a predestined and cruel fate. Their resistance seemed almost half-hearted. What will be will be. Every shot was incredible. Brilliant film and book.
I wonder if my interest in dystopia (particularly literature), influences my recent works. Dystopian (and a couple of post apocalyptic) influences – an excuse for a list:
We, (1921), Yevgeny Zamyatin
Brave New World, (1932), Aldous Huxley
Animal Farm, (1945), George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four, (1949), George Orwell
I Am Legend (1954) Richard Matheson
Lord of the Flies, (1954), William Golding
The Death of Grass, (1956) John Christopher
A Clockwork Orange, (1962), Anthony Burgess
Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981) Alistair Gray
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) Margaret Atwood
Cloud Atlas (2004) David Mitchell
Never Let Me Go (2005) Kazuo Ishiguro
Kathy’s final words (if you don’t want to know look away now) in the final scene from Never let me go:
“I come here and imagine that this is the spot where everything I’ve lost since my childhood is washed out. I tell myself, if that were true, and I waited long enough then a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field and gradually get larger until I’d see it was Tommy. He’d wave. And maybe call. I don’t know if the fantasy go beyond that, I can’t let it. I remind myself I was lucky to have had any time with him at all. What I’m not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we’ve lived through, or feel we’ve had enough time”.
