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| Untitled, Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel & French Polish On Paper, 40 cm X 60 cm, 2018 |
After a bit of consideration,
I decided to push on with my paper-based flag pieces – with a view to rounding the series out at ten. Here, then, is number nine.
One of the
greatest dangers with consciously working in series like this, is obviously that
of empty repetition. It definitely feels
important to keep looking back across the group in its entirety and ask, “am
I just going through the same motions? – is anything else being stated?” In
this case, there are certainly plenty of motifs and manoeuvres carrying over
from version to version, but I feel there’s also enough variation and
progression to keep me (at least) interested.
Each feels like it broke a little bit of new ground as the series
developed – often picking up from where it’s predecessor left off. I’m pretty confident I can take sufficient pleasure
in doing violence to the flag once more, to complete the tenth.
There is actually some method
in my working towards the round number.
Since reaching some degree of resolution with my ‘Below The Line / Beneath Contempt’ text, I’ve been considering
ways it might be presented - in an exhibition context, for instance. One, hopefully attainable, method might be to
do it via video. My current thought is
that these flag images might form a potential background to such a piece –
something which would accord with my interests in self-reflexivity and the recycling
of existing content through different media.
Should that idea be realised, a series of ten images would appear to fit
well with the five-act structure in which ‘BTL/BC’
currently resides.
As the titles of these
related posts suggest, I’ve remained reluctant to regard these particular pieces as definitive statements, and
have tended toward the view that they should ultimately carry some form of text
in their physical state too. However, as I
near completion of the series, and can see them together on the wall, I’m
moving away from that notion. My prosed video
would surely satisfy that textual itch more than adequately, and a lesson I’d
do well to learn is that individual pieces need not aspire to doing everything
all at once.
Maybe it’s also the result of
looking repeatedly at Jasper Johns’ own glorious painted flags, in recent
months. Johns was, of course, a master
of deadpan presentation, and of nuancing and recontextualising the found and
the familiar so that the viewer’s own interpretations might flood in. My current body of work under the banner, ‘This S(c)eptic Isle’, isn’t short of
implied agendas (least of all, ‘BTL/BC’)
but it was never my intention to merely trumpet my own particular viewpoint unequivocally. The work betrays more than a little queasiness
over issues of jingoism, national identity, post-referendum angst, social
division, etc. – it’s true. But my
intention was always more to reflect the woeful infantilisation of current public/political
debate, than to push a single, over-simplified agenda. The damaged psychology, societal neurosis,
and cultural divisions currently framing our lives, are ultimately of more
interest in themselves than partisan polemics alone. For that reason - my current instinct is that,
in their physical form, these flag images might be best left to stand as they
are.
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