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'Fridge Door Painting' (Work In Progress), Acrylics & Mixed Media On
Salvaged Refrigerator Door, July 2017 |
I’ve all but given up hoping
that 2017 will start feeling less like hard work. For whatever reason - this year has so far been
largely characterised by a lack of urgency and dynamism. A suitable word to describe the overall sensation
might be ‘lacklustre’. Nevertheless,
although my artwork might have slowed a bit, it has remained extant (and relatively
steady). The various ideas and nascent
projects I identified at the start of the year all still feel more or less ‘live’
in my own mind, even if I’m forced to acknowledge that there’s only ever time
(or energy) to address a small part of it all.
Anyway, the arrival of the blessed educational summer break helps a lot
in that respect, so it feels like time for another work-in-progress post.
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'Fridge Door Paintings' (Work In Progress), Acrylics & Mixed Media On
Salvaged Refrigerator Doors, July 2017 |
As implied above, my current
habit is to mentally organise my work (or projected work) into discrete
projects, each with its own themes or implied agenda. It may be an unnecessarily anal approach, but
does allow me to prioritise without feeling overwhelmed by all the thought of
all the stuff I might (but aren’t) doing at any given time. For the time being, the main focus remains on my
‘This S(c)eptic Isle’ project [1.].
I’ve already shown some ofthe initial ‘Flag’ pieces belonging
to it, and alluded to the extended found text piece which triggered it all in
the first place. Undoubtedly, the
initial stimulus for the project was my feelings of disillusionment/bafflement/anger
around the E.U. referendum, and the wider contexts of rising Nationalism, ignorance,
division and misguided or pernicious agendas swirling around it. However, whichever side of that particular
fence one falls on, it feels more like a symptom of a much wider
psycho-sociological situation, than just the single, identifiable cause of all our current ills. In reality, technological acceleration, the
joined-up nature of our digital age, the logics of Capitalism and trade, and an
increasingly insecure environment, all make the fraught negotiation between the
global and the parochial feel like an inescapable theme of the century.
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'Fridge Door Painting' (Work In Progress), Acrylics & Mixed Media On
Salvaged Refrigerator Door, July 2017 |
In my mind at least, ‘This S(c)eptic Isle’ is evolving into a
kind of wider address on the current ‘state of things’, with a very clear
parochial connect – but hopefully with a strand of implied self-critique of
such localism built-in. Perhaps a more
apt descriptor would be ‘The State Of
Things (Round Our Way)’ [2.]. With my local hat firmly screwed down, it’s
perhaps worth noting that the neighbourhood I inhabit provides plenty of raw
material for all this - being a once-productive tract of ‘working class’, inner
city habitation. It now presents as a
relatively down-at-heel mélange, comprising lingering vestiges of that older
population; immigrants from several continents; white-van tradesmen; gig-workers;
low-paid carers and public sector workers; the opportunistic; the ‘Just About
Managing’; and the Grimly Hanging On.
It’s neither wasteland or conflict zone as such, but is certainly sufficiently
frayed and torn to reflect many of the societal tensions or challenges of 21st
Century Britain.
It also provides the resonant
motifs around which ‘TSI’ is
increasingly coalescing. If my early
adoption of (and visual violence to) the flag motif is a pretty blunt, (and
possibly trite) instrument, some of the others feel a little more potentially
nuanced. It’s my hope that they might tend slightly more to the allusive than
the merely polemical. The current list
would include: discarded white goods (particularly refrigerators), furnishings and
household goods; abandoned children’s toys; cardboard boxes (and street trash
generally), white vans (certain other colours are permissible); the empty
silver capsules of laughing gas enthusiasts; and (a possible new addition, this
-) mopeds. Each is in plentiful supply,
and a short walk round the block with the camera, on any given day, will
generally throw up new examples.
Each category feels feels
freighted with potential associations, and totemic of the way we live. The common themes of refuse,
‘street-disposal’, and of stuff being discarded generally, can’t really be
ignored. Whether this reflects a sense
of disenfranchised populations, lost generations, discarded values, voracious
consumerism, or disposable and low-grade aspirations – I’ll leave open to
interpretation. More optimistic
spectators might also see evidence of a still (partially) functioning society,
in which the local council will (eventually) send a street sweeper or a truck
to remove some of the pavement debris, or a scrap-merchant might do the same,
in the hope of lucrative recycling (and with slightly greater alacrity).
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| West Leicester, July 2017 |
Most specifically, the images
here all relate to discarded fridges, and the fact that photographing them
quickly led to the realisation I might salvage their doors to act as actual
painting supports. If more interpretive
clues where to be offered, they might include ideas about ‘preservation’
generally; about fluctuating occupancy and the provision of ‘mod cons’ and
‘affordable’ accommodation; reluctance or inability to pay the costs of
appropriate disposal, insights into the way we eat (or ‘Just Eat’); or even some
perceived ambiguity in the term, ‘White Goods’.
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| West Leicester, May 2017 |
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| West Leicester, July 2017 |
Anyway, If Jasper Johns is a
pretty obvious influence on the early flags, and Robert Rauschenberg – on the
idea of street trash, generally, Richard Prince’s repurposed car hoods body
panels and van doors should be acknowledged in connection with the fridge doors. The obvious difference however, is that I choose
to treat them more as image-carriers, rather than as wholly sculptural entities
- as he has. Either way, the last few
weeks have seen me periodically amassing a small collection of them, before
stripping away the unwanted interior elements, and renovating/prepping/priming the
exterior surfaces. With the arrival of
the school holidays, I’m finally able to get on with resolving the actual
imagery they will carry.
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| Sketchbook Pages, May - June 2017 |
Have I been unconsciously
delaying the arrival of this stage? – I now ask myself. It’s noticable that my recent return to
working fairly diligently in a sketchbook (something I’d essentially ignored
for a couple of years, of late) has somewhat slowed my progress – even as it
proves invaluable in ordering my thoughts and considering my options. It is, I’m convinced, a ‘grown-up’ way to
develop ideas and imagery. However, I
also realise that using it to generate well-resolved images, for faithful
transcription as larger, final pieces, is no longer really the most rewarding
way to work. If the sketchbook documents
my internal monologue, the actual work flows better when many of the final judgments
are reserved. These days, the most
meaningful resolutions feel like they’re achieved through chance events and the
accumulation of happy accidents, and within the arena of an actual piece [3.]. Those
breakthroughs feel more exciting – and are definitely stumbled upon more
spontaneously (and rapidly).
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| Sketchbook Pages, June 2017 |
Could all this also be why
many artists remain taciturn when asked what their work is about, or what it
‘means’? Regardless of the interpretive hints
above, it’s often all this procedural stuff that really comes to fill our heads.
Sometimes it simply means, “Finally, I’ve managed to arrive at
something I could bear to stick on the wall – I wonder how, exactly”. I’m
not even at that stage with these. For
now it’s simply a case of , “Oh, these feel reasonably encouraging – I
think I can imagine what I might do to complete them.” We’ll
see…
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| West Leicester, May 2017 |
[1.]: This whole internal wrangle over how to
word/spell this title continues, even though I thought I’d sorted it in my own
mind. (Told you nothing feels easy this year).
Spotting the difference between British and American spellings of ‘Sceptic’/’Skeptic’ is all well and
good, but doesn’t excuse the illiterate assumption that ‘Sceptic’ and ‘Septic’ are both spelled the same way. So, the brackets are back, and now it’s ‘S(c)eptic’. Am I just trying too hard with all these word
games?
[2.]: Again with the blinkin’ brackets!
[3.]: And so - despite any professed aspirations to a greater element of conceptualism in my work, it seems that, in this respect, my natural inclination is more towards the organic, intuitive approach of painting. You can drive yourself mad debating such stuff. In the end, it’s better to just get on with being whatever kind of artist you can be – instead of mithering about what you think you should be.
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