It’s been a while since I wrote my last blog – December and January seemed to pass me by. It got me a thinking about 2015 and what I felt I learnt and achieved in respect to my art practice. I find it’s very easy to feel down-hearted when things get a bit quiet and to so easily forget those times when it all seems to be happening. Certainly in the first half of 2015 I managed to exhibit my work in a number of exhibitions, I won the 2015 Cass Art Materials Bursary, and had published a few interviews including a-n, CASS and Made in Arts London. I also joined Zeitgeist Art Projects and attended a few of their networking and advice events. So all in all – not a bad run. More importantly, I did a lot of experimenting within my practice, specifically trying out new and alternative surfaces, some new products and changed processes combined. Yes, the results have been mixed, but I relish the adventure, creativity and learning curve and these things in themselves inspire me to carry on.
I have attempted to start 2016 with great gusto. I have 3 exhibitions I will be involved in imminently, written up another interview for someone (yet to be published) and have managed to get my work in the UK Vogue advertising features for 3 months. Let’s see how that goes.
I have been working on 2 paintings over the last couple of months on and off. The first is called ‘Encounter’ and the other ‘Some other place’. They are a further continuation and exploration of my more traditional method of printing digital montages and then painting onto these, focusing on old cities as my inspiration.
Within these digital works, I have attempted to get lost amongst the hard lines, light, patterns and shadows. I like to focus on alternative and almost nonsensical ways into the work. It may not seem obvious but MC Escher is one of the inspirations for these paintings – particularly for ‘Encounter’ with its odd angles and spaces within spaces. It’s a building but not a building, made of other buildings, both the inside and the outside all at once so that the eye has trouble trying to grapple with it. It leaves the viewer no choice but to wander down the passage way to the side of it and then travel up somehow to the sky. In my other painting ‘Some other place’, there is a dichotomy between the closeness of aspects of an old city to that which is in the distance. The eye skims over the walls, tiles, peeling paint, a moving tram, rooftops and windows, elaborate church alter and ornate archway – the reprieve being the suggestion of somewhere else such as the unseen road to which the tram travels, the butter yellow sky and glimpse of another city in the distance.
Both paintings continue to explore my interest in the ebb and flow of the photographic digital mark versus the painterly and between reality and the imagination.
That quiet pathway that leads to home. The flowers that fall upon the ground. The lovely little café around the corner. The city is the place where dreams begin. The beach in the cold winter light, the ground wallpaper of decaying red roses – they remind me of the pohutukawa; the summer time Christmas tree of Aotearoa.
For the last umpteen months I have been collaging and transferring my photographs onto found materials. I suspect I will continue with this aspect of my work if and when I come across suitable and interesting materials to work upon. Then one day as I was clearing out my studio I came across scraps of paper and sketch books with bits of my doodles, sketches and collages which in themselves didn’t really amount to much, other than they were subconscious outpourings from a few years ago These artistic detritus I realised were also a type of ‘found’ material which I could further explore and work upon. Copiously photographing these items I set to work using Photoshop, cropping and digitally manipulating these to my heart’s content. I feel so pleased with the results I feel like I have cracked open Aladdin’s cave in terms of the liberation and potential this gives me going forward. To an outsider this may seem rather an exaggeration, but this new venture not only remains true to my practice (be it in a reverse kind of way), but it also excites me in the perpetual iteration of the work – it both turns in on itself, but also leads to a kind of divergence.
Time can be a funny thing. When you are not looking, it just slips by as if nothing, yet it can be such an important factor in the creating and making of things. I have been working on quite a number of items over the last couple of months, none yet really complete. My Urban Desire series continues on and to be honest I think will pop up now and then in the future as I come across something. The 2 pieces I display here began with photos within the city of London, a place I worked in for many years. I have always been intrigued with the grid-like approach of the Barbican buildings and I played around with this idea of pattern repetition montaging it with images of flowers. I think of all the energy and buzz of activity of the people and events when I think of this.
The other is a typical city landscape and street scene which includes the Gherkin building. My digital montage/painting plays around with ideas of the evening, lights, grids and ideas. It’s a bit science fiction looking. Baubles fall from the sky as if as snow. A bit mad really. I don’t suppose many people see the city of London as a magical place – my experience of it mentioned in the art world, is that people tend to grimace – I can understand why, globalisation, fat cats, and all that. But there is a magic to it too. It can be exciting, and stimulating and full of people from all walks of life working there. Both these pieces sit on found wood from a skip – they are kind of a memory and imagination blast.
I have also been working on what I call my Scavenger series. Taking this idea of using found material and in many cases actual rubbish I pick up off the street, I have been montaging and painting on these items. Squashed drink containers represent commercialisation, hopes and dreams reduced to a flattened existence. Damaged hub caps reveal broken journeys and wanderings as well as glimmers of potential opportunities. What is critical in all these works is that time has played an important part – memory for the city pieces, and the actual physicality of the objects being bashed around on the street set against the difficulties and possibilities and dreams of the cities inhabitants.
The seas of Hiroshige cross the canvas in suggestion.
Driftwood bare on a beach on a stormy New Zealand day. It looks like a deer, peaceful but definitely dead.
Scribbles in the sand reappear as technological repetitions and painterly crawlings.
Digital meets the physical mark, imagination meets memory.
Where am I going with this? It is as so…
The contradiction of the weight of loss and hollowness one feels.
The acceptance of what could never be.
Those last few days were difficult. I felt the absence before it had even begun.
