Artist statement
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| Title: The City of Dis (2009) |
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past.
The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.”
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852).
It could be argued that today more than ever in human history we are living on the edge of the Apocalypse, with thermo nuclear weapons, natural disasters, our dependency on technology and fragile economic structures that through the actions of a few chasing wealth in a mythical landscape can affect us all greatly. The work is a direct reaction to these current economic temperatures. ‘The city’ is chosen as a focal point of representing these times. Their shape and monuments are unique to our contemporary times. Globalisation has seen to it that no one city stand by themselves, instead each is dependant on the others success and failure.
The most important aspect of the work is mark-making and the actions undertaken to make these marks. In particular, burning, mixing, stuffing, scraping and smothering. The paints chosen are not traditionally used within historical or contemporary paint practice. They are chosen for the origins of their function and their incompatible relationship, which allows for a multitude of textures, tones and patterns, even though the pallet is generally limited to just 2 or 3 colours. Particularly important patterns to arise with in the paintings are visceral. The city is itself a monumental viscera, acting like a lung or heart, the buildings within to act in this way, right down to the people and their movements and interactions. The ideas behind this analogies are informed by artists such as Helen Chadwick, who superimposed photos of her own cells on a rocky coastal landscape, suggesting the colonisation of the body by virus and the land by the body. The Gutai Manifesto is also of particular relevance to the incompatibility of these paints and their fighting of one another. It says; ‘If one leaves the material as it is, presenting it just as material, then it starts to tell us something and speaks with a mighty voice. Keeping the life of the material alive also means bringing the spirit alive, and lifting up the spirit means leading the material up to the height of the spirit.’
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| Title: November (2008) |
The Post-Apocalyptic is nothing new in the world of art. In J.J. Charlesworth’s essay for the December 2008 edition of Art Review entitled ‘In the Ruins of the Future’ he said “I can’t help but notice that a lot of art right now is preoccupied with a sense of how human society seems to be drifting toward some sort of gloomy, nondescript end, in some not-so-far-off, worn-out future. It’s not that artists are wiling in unison that ‘the end is nigh!’ Rather, it’s as if some art is starting to make sense of- and give shape to- a vague but widespread sense of uncertainty about the state of humanity that seems to be everywhere in our culture today, reflecting a growing feeling of apprehension and foreboding, to the point that if there is a future, it might not necessarily contain humans. Art right now is full of visions of near future and the ruins of recently disappeared civilisations.”
Keith Robertson
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but by under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past.
The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
It could be argued that today more than ever in human history we are living on the edge of the Apocalypse, with thermo nuclear weapons, natural disasters, our dependency on technology and fragile economic structures that through the actions of a few chasing wealth in a mythical landscape can affect us all greatly. The work is a direct reaction to these current economic temperatures. ‘The city’ is chosen as a focal point of representing these times. Their shape and monuments are unique to our contemporary times. Globalisation has seen to it that no one city stand by themselves, instead each is dependant on the others success and failure.
The Post-Apocalyptic is nothing new in the world of art. In J.J. Charlesworth’s essay for the December 2008 edition of Art Review entitled ‘In the Ruins of the Future’ he said “I can’t help but notice that a lot of art right now is preoccupied with a sense of how human society seems to be drifting toward some sort of gloomy, nondescript end, in some not-so-far-off, worn-out future. It’s not that artists are wiling in unison that ‘the end is nigh!’ Rather, it’s as if some art is starting to make sense of- and give shape to- a vague but widespread sense of uncertainty about the state of humanity that seems to be everywhere in our culture today, reflecting a growing feeling of apprehension and foreboding, to the point that if there is a future, it might not necessarily contain humans. Art right now is full of visions of near future and the ruins of recently disappeared civilisations.”
As you enter the largest room on the third floor of the Tate Modern, you are met with a gigantic painting by Anselm Keifer, called Lilith 1987-9 and measures 3800 x 5600 mm (fig 1). This horrific vision of urban sprawl was inspired by Kiefer’s visit to Sao Paulo in Brazil. Tangled copper wiring signals the breakdown of communication. The city is engulfed in an apocalyptic haze, which Kiefer created by spreading dust and earth across the painting, then burning parts of its surface. According to Hebrew mythology, Lilith was Adam’s first wife, a seductive and demonic airborne spirit. In Kiefer’s painting, Lilith seems to bring destruction from the air upon Oscar Niemeyer’s modernist buildings- S. Wilson, Tate gallery. As one stands in front of this painting and focuses on the buildings there is an over whelming sense of being able to simply tilt forward and fall off one of the high rise buildings and end it.
Similarly, bathed in fire, flood, love and turmoil And While London Burns is a compelling collision of thriller, opera and guided walk.
Starring recent Olivier Award nominee Douglas Hodge, this soundtrack for the era of climate change is set amongst the skyscrapers of the most powerful financial district on earth, London’s Square Mile. An opera for one, it takes the listener, equipped with an mp3 player, on a walking audio adventure through the streets and alleyways of our city.
Composer Isa Suarez’s score evokes London’s fiery past, oil drenched present and a dark unknowable future through the eyes of a tormented financial worker obsessed by the collapse of civilisations.
Produced by award winning arts organisation, PLATFORM and written by John Jordan and James Marriott- T.Fairs, I.Gerlach & N.Robins. PLATFORM works across disciplines for social and ecological justice. It combines the transformative power of art with the tangible goals of campaigning, the rigor of in-depth research with the vision to promote alternative futures. The audio files and a map for this work are all downloadable for free from the website www.andwhilelondonburns.com (fig2). This is thanks to Arts Council England, which puts public money to work "to get more art to more people in more places". Nick Kimberley- Evening Standard- described it as, “An ingenious way of reanimating this monstrous city, showing some of what lurks in its shadows.”
Alternately what would your city if it had been hit by a thermo nuclear device? This question is some what answered by a terrifying Google maps application on www.carloslabs.com/node/16. Here visitors of the site are asked to find their home city or town, select Nuclear weapon and fire. The result is a template with various degrees of damage coursed by the weapon of choice. These unsettling and truly disturbing illustrations of the destructive powers humans now have, are informed with short statements about which nations have what and when and where they have been use. For instance, in 1945, the US dropped “Little Boy,” a 15kt Uranium Bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The first device used in war. This really awakens the modern eras greatest monument to its materiality in away and pace that only a natural disaster could contend with. In Act 2 of …And While London Burns, the guide quotes from a high ranking member of Swiss Ray Amunic Hayes in his 1996 report “losses coursed by extreme natural catastrophes, in one of the worlds metropolises, would be so great as to course the collapse of the entire countries economic systems and could even bring about the collapse of the worlds financial markets.”
There are plenty of people who know so much on how contemporary society is affecting climate change and what drastic measures are needed to be taken, beyond their window dressing. Skye Sherwin writes in the Art Review, March 2009, about Josephine Mecksepers work, ‘what at first looks jarring can seem obvious on second glance- we buy politics as we do clothes, and both elements, particularly when bathed in a retro cool, are used to make statements about our identity.” Mecksepers is renowned for her display of five-and-dime-style outmoded fashion items (fig 3). The anti-aesthetic richness of these displays evokes a venerable honesty, which is all too familiar in the poorer parts of the city.
The cities map- as you would have expected- has evolved over time, through it its function and need. For instance in Ancient and Medieval times we find a city wall. This inhibited the city from being plundered by warring factions, and its reminisce can still be found today in Medina towns and even London Wall- which incidentally makes the outer edge of the original Roman city. These cities- like London- were usually rectangular shaped, inside at the centre would be the religious, political and military buildings. Out from these would be property owned by wealthy members of society and commonly they would have their work trade at the lower part of the building were their workers also lived. Beyond this area and commonly beyond the walls of the city, in a less predetermined and structured manner would be the poorest of society. In structures reminiscent to the Favelas of Rio (fig4), and would usually have their own markets and trading areas. These, like those in Brazil and other parts of the world were poor quality housing, cramped and rife with poverty and danger. Though much has changed in the modern era, not all has been completely. No longer is there a need for city walls, instead there are boarder controls, marking the conceptual idea of countries. The cities centre is no longer its religious, political or military intension, but the organ of commerce and interestingly because of this, the rich tend to move out of the city and the poor have to move in. The birth of the Middle Class gave rise to huge shifts in power, they became the new Ruling Class and with it new volumes of exploitation. Though standards of living for the poorer end of society are better than then, they are still paradoxically the same.
Social injustice and the ever fast pace and claustrophobia of the modern city are all key factors in the paintings voice, right from its very conception. Now we shall go through how the painting was made.
The first stage in the paintings construction was the canvas. This consists of six plaster ceiling tiles laid in two piles of three joined to one another with PVA, then rested next to each other and screwed onto a piece of hard board. Once dried the canvas was laid flat on the floor- face up- where it was subjected to torment with a Stanley Knife and both sides of a Hammer. The two tools left scored lines, scratches, dents, crevasses and chunks ripped off (fig 5,6,7&8). The edges of the canvas were sprayed black, so as not to have to do this after the paintings face was finished. Then- with the canvas still laid on the floor- Red Floor paint, Silver Metal paint and Bitumen (black) were poured and dripped onto the canvas surface, using various kitchen utensils such as ladles, large spoons and spatulas. At this stage it looked like an Abstract Expressionist painting by Jackson Pollock with its splatters and dribbles of runny paint, though unlike like Pollock, the paint was distinctly laid so there were three horizontal strips, with one predominant tone on each. This would work to make a landscape, with foreground, mi-ground and a background. Then using my hands in a fluid like left to right motion, mixed the paints into each other until the entire canvas face was covered and the composition was satisfactory. It is important to note that at this stage, even with my hands away from the paint, it still moves and will continue doing so until a skin has formed.
It to is important not to over look my using my hands to mix the paint. This directness of physical and spiritual connection to the material helps not only to ensure the entire canvas surface is covered, but if it were not for this particular technique of mixing the paints would not be so generous in showing us their intolerance of one another. A brush would interfere with its own textural intensions and make it impossible to paint such truth. In The Gutai Manifesto, it states; ‘Gutai art does not change the material but brings it to life. Guatai art does not falsify the material. In Gutai art the human spirit and the material reach out their hands to each other, even though they are otherwise opposed to each other. The material is not absorbed by the spirit. The spirit does not force the material into submission. If one leaves the material as it is, presenting it just as material, then it starts to tell us something and speaks with a mighty voice. Keeping the life of the material alive also means bringing the spirit alive, and lifting up the spirit means leading the material up to the height of the spirit.’ All of the materials used in this painting, were chosen specifically for their previous and traditional role, as well as for their own materiality.
After this stage of painting, there were a number of minor inserts with black spray paint, and then it was left to dry for a couple weeks. Due to the thickness of the paint in some areas, it will never be fully dry for month. However with this thick skinned surface and wet underneath, the skin is able to be pushed and prodded, making ripples on the surface and even breaking at times to reveal a naked underbelly (fig 9). This further torment on the painting after the paint pots have been closed is what influenced by the work of Alexis Harding. Harding’s ‘paintings emphasise their own inescapable materiality through playful chemistry and vertiginous sense of their own collapse. The work is driven by ideas and process simultaneously and is made by exploiting the incompatibility between artist’ oil paint and household gloss paint… the paint is subjected to various ‘behavioural processes’ in relation to the idea of each piece. Often it is pushed, pulled, squeezed and shaken to reveal wrinkled, scarred and puckered surfaces that when hung or leant on a wall continue to change, and take on their own form, as they slip from the support.’ -Rubicon Gallery website.
The final act of painting was done outside. Again the painting was laid on the floor, and then sparklers were lit and laid on the surface in a semi-random order. There was little contemplation into where to put them, only that they respond to the existing lines in the painting and avoid and disrupt specific spots. As they burned, they melted and burnt the paint with it, leaving dusty scares each horrifically ambiguous (fig 9,10,11&12). As you can see in the photographs, not all the metal rods from the sparklers stayed stuck to the canvas surface, in fact only two remain out of the seven used.
The finished paintings overall composition is evocative of many of the physical aspects of the modern city. For example the hard straight lines that at time criss-cross over each other indicate as sense of the grid formation of city blocks and those line reaching up to the top of the canvas float like silent plains in the sky. The misty, smoggy black cloud in the for-ground distils that section of the brain previously only active when passing through foreign shadow rich ally ways. The fiery reddish mid ground lend the painting it title of ‘The infernal City,’ flowing across the canvas like a river of magma. This river flows where a typical cityscape would show its buildings, maybe the unstoppable power of molten lava is metaphoric of the modern worlds growth of the city and urbanisation. Can this force be quelled? Or will they carry on erupting like a metropolis volcano, each with their epicentre to their increasing over flow. So to the background erupts in clouds of silver, forming a skyline on first glance. Then when wee look closer these eruptions begin to take on far more representations than just clouds or ironic fire works. On closer inspection they look like a cluster of cells growing in a beacon or an aerial photograph of one of the worlds major metropolises like London (Fig 14). Looking closer at some of the other details of the painting now, in particular fig 11, we see marks that are synonymous to a number of other faces of the city. It could be a section of concrete in a building hit by a blast from a bullet or grenade, or the building has just fallen into a state of disrepair. Alternatively this section is remarkably similar to torn flesh, and in particular the type of marks that can be found in some extreme examples of Heroin miss use (fig 15).
The overall tone and composition of the finished painting (fig 16,17&19) is remarkably similar to George Groszes, ‘Metropolis’ (1916-1917) (fig19). ‘Metropolis’ is crowded, chaotic and hot, all infernal qualities. Grosz deals with issues of paranoia and anti-Semitism in many of his works and this is no exception. This, along with Anselm Keifers Lillith, are sublime examples of what mood was intended in ‘The Infernal City.’ Feverishly hot, suffocating and cramped and riddled with danger and poverty.
“This swamp that breathes with a prodigious stink
lies in a circle round the doleful city
that now we cannot’enter without strife.”
Dante, The Divine Comedy, Volume 1: Inferno, Canto IX (33)
It would not be hard to imagine some of the inhabitants to the city in this painting, being like the characters in Samuel Becketts ‘Play,’ the 2000 version (fig 20.) The elegiac visceral textures and patterns in the painting, communicate an experience that is one of the individual in the space of the many.
"All history is contemporary history" - Benedetto Croce
Keith Robertson
sources
Peter Jukes (1990), A Shout In The Street: An Excursion into the Modern City, University of California Press, Los Angeles
J.J. Charlesworth (Dec 2008), In the Ruins of the Future, Art Review, London
Jiro Yoshihara (Dec 1956), Gutai Manifesto, Geijutsu Shincho, Japan
Dante Alighieri (2002), The Divine Comedy, volume 1: Inferno. Translated by Mark Musa, Penguin Classics, London
J.G. Ballard (1973) Concrete Island, Farrar, London
fig1, Anselm Kiefer, Lilith, 1987-9, Oil, ash and copper wire on canvas, 3800 x 5600 mm. image taken from http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=18999
fig 2, map for the sound walk “…And While London Burns.” Downloaded from http://www.andwhilelondonburns.com/download/awlb-map.pdf
fig 3, Josephine Meckseper, Untitled (Vitrine), 2005, the image was taken from the back cover page of ‘The Josephine Meckseper,’ catalogue no 2, Sternberg Press.
fig 4 A photograph of Favelas in Rio di Gennaro, Brazil. Taken from http://arvonblog.org/category/writing/
fig 5. Scored lines into the canvas surface.
fig 6. Close up of tormented canvas surface (right side).
fig 7. Close up of tormented canvas surface (left side).
fig 8. Finished canvas surface, ready for painting.
fig 9. Rippled outer skin of painting, broken to reveal its rich bloody interior.
fig 10. Detail of a charred section of the paint, with sparkler metal still attached.
fig 11. Detail of a charred section of the paint, with sparkler metal still attached.
fig 13. Detail of ‘The Infernal City’
fig 14. Satellite photo of London taken from http://www.knowledgerush.com/wiki_image/d/df/London_Landsat.jpg
fig 15. Heroin Junkies arm.
fig16. The finished painting, The Infernal City
fig17. Close up of the left side of the finished painting, The Infernal City
fig 19. George Grosz (1893-1959), Metropolis (1917), oil on board, 680 x 476 mm. http://tapciuc.ro/blog/george-grosz-metropolis/
fig 20. Samuel Beckett- Play (2000). Taken from http://static.guim.co.uk/Guardian/film/gallery/2008/mar/18/minghella/beckett-213.jpg
Recent Work | About work | Medium etc
Text on porings, cigarette sculptures
Motive/messages behind the pieces
Methods and practice
Progression
Influences
inspiration
Recent Work | About work | Medium etc
Text on porings, cigarette sculptures
Motive/messages behind the pieces
Methods and practice
Progression | Influences | inspiration
Progression | Influences | inspiration
Text on porings, cigarette sculptures
Motive/messages behind the pieces
Progression | Influences | inspiration
Progression | Influences | inspiration