'The Basin': Art Trail 2 - 'Action Painting' [Draft 1.0]

All Images: Floating Harbour, Bristol,  February 2023

‘Action Painting’:

For a time, formal muscularity gives way to “an arena in which to act”. The iron-clad underflank has become a designated target for spontaneous ejections, as the bridging function embraces a new entanglement. Decor and physics combine in a fluid exchange, although, in the present case, the surface tension effects are small. The moment has been elongated at a flick, with each line of flight logged prior to accretion. [Note that the formation, motion, and stability of fluid filaments have been vastly studied because of their prominence in a wide range of flow phenomena]. Several regimes are observed: viscous, gravitational, inertio-gravitational, and inertial, and liquid transfer across the board remains the key to this environment.

The historical significance cannot be overestimated, with traditional parameters dissolving into a field of uncertainty. The roots for this style of painting lie at the dawn of Modernism - since when, many artists have used formlessness as a tool for creativity, not to elevate art, but to get it down and dirty. To one notorious thinker, “l’inform” was about destroying categories and knocking art off its metaphorical pedestal. An understanding of the physical conditions at which these patterns were created is important to further art research, and it can be used as a tool in the authentication of paintings. 

A ritual intoxication has leaned back onto a vertical plane now [swivelling on demand towards the most advantageous aspect]. Therefore, it is relevant to compare the surface tension effects with gravitational stretching. At greater elevations, seabirds conduct experiments of their own.

'The Basin': Art Trail 1' - 'Visible Form' [Draft 1.0]

 

All Images: Floating Harbour, Bristol, February - April 2023

‘Visible Form’:

Art has the capacity to draw us into mental and emotional places where we can go, let go, and come back. Inserted as a way-marker at the intersection of two such zones, this exhibit is typical of those earliest sculptural forays in what would become a significant international career [one in which such concerns remain constant]. If we can enter the area the forms occupy, we do so only to gain further experience of them and to confirm a sensation of space and volume which the sculpture offered from a distance.

 

Colour is totally demanding once it becomes a priority, and the cadmium imperative is fully condensed here [occurring as a bright yellow coating on sphalerite or siderite, deposited by meteoric waters]. It is an important truth that emphasis upon colour has helped to liberate the modern artist from particular circumstances in his search for general [natural] truths in personal experience.The piece constitutes a delectable arbitrary imposition upon the landscape, but degrees of purpose still accrue [errant incursion is denied; a bootlace may be tied]. The sculpture invites this kind of close involvement. The scale is always a human scale, and the occasional apparently irrational detail serves to hold our attention at close quarters. In this context, botany can never be ruled out, although plants have no excretory mechanism for cadmium.