A Perfect Wrapper

Cathy Lomax runs Transition Gallery, a Hackney Gallery 10+ years in establishment, and she is the publisher of Garageland and Arty magazines in addition to being a full time artist. She is fully immersed in the contemporary art world in London. These many strands are as much a part of her practice as painting and indeed, much of her personal and artistic sensibility is visible in each of these endeavours. This shift to multiple practices is common in contemporary culture now, but the source and intensity of personal experience, observation and perception is no closer to exposure.

Sixteen Most Beautiful Men (8 left profiles), (c)2012 Cathy Lomax

Jane Boyer: Your work often deals with pop idols (Sixteen Most Beautiful Men, Dead Filmstars) and iconic film imagery (Film Diary, The Count of Monte Cristo). Curiously though, it’s not pop culture which is your subject, but the fascination, escapism, hero-worship and fan-love we’ve all experienced. What fascinates you about our psychological propensity to fascination and ‘longing for something unobtainable’?

Elizabeth, (c)2011 Cathy Lomax

Cathy Lomax: I think that pop culture in general is just a wrapper for supplying the things that the market demands – i.e. what we want. These things do not change much; they are excitement, desire, escapism etc. So with this in mind I let my self lead the direction of my work by following what it is that I am drawn to. I do not like to think that I am in any kind of elevated position in my commentary on my subjects; I am in and amongst the subject matter. Looking deeper into what it is I am interested and fascinated by, it is apparent it is something that I do not actually want but rather that it is something I can think about and live out in my head – probably because this is the safest way to do it. This is what led me to the Film Diary as film for most people is the most intense way to experience other lives and worlds.

JB: Tell us more about your piece, Glass Menagerie. Tennessee William’s play, The Glass Menagerie, which is the inspiration for your piece, looks at many of these issues of longing, fragility and nostalgia, but also issues of control, desire and a fervent denial of reality. What were you exploring in your work?

Glass Menagerie, (c)2011 Cathy Lomax

CL: It is quite a hard piece to talk about as it has a very fragmentary meaning. I am a big fan of Tennessee Williams’ work generally and always take the chance to see his plays when they are being performed. Val Xavier in Tennessee William’s ‘Orpheus Descending’ says ‘No body ever gets to know no body! We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins for life!’ – which just seems to contain so much truth. My Glass Menagerie piece is full of personal references and connections which mean nothing to anyone else but hopefully make the work into something that has a certain poignancy. It is formed from a collection of glass animals which I sourced from eBay. These animals are doppelgängers of a set one of my relatives had and I remember admiring them as a child but not being able to touch them.

JB: In your interview with Ayla Lepine, curator for Past in Present at the Courtauld Institute last year, you and she discuss the problem with nostalgia as ‘an alienation from the present’. You say,“I prefer the idea of sensucht, a German term that is more associated with a unique feeling you might get about people, places or events that can be almost impossible to communicate to anyone else – like how a favourite song makes you feel.”  Is it the uniqueness of the feeling or the fact that it is incommunicable which appeals to you?

the Way He Liked Me to Look, (C)2011 Cathy Lomax

CL: It is the feeling of Sensucht itself that I am attracted to (as everyone probably is). It is about finding something or someone that you feel something special for – it could be described as a-butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling. Often if you communicate this the specialness disappears, this makes trying to produce art about it very difficult as it is such a personal, delicate concept. So I make work about things that I feel something for and don’t enforce my feelings about them or pin things down too precisely. I am hoping to leave an openness – I do not want to force my feelings or interpretation about the imagery. I aim to imbibe the work with a contemplative quality.

JB: In your Arty 21 article, Dark, there is a quote by C.S. Lewis from his essay, The Weight of Glory, “I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you – the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence… the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something which has never actually appeared in our experience”. Do you think this Sensucht feeling is under siege by the phenomenon of social media communications with the public sharing aspect of it? It seems to me the secret feeling of Senucht is related to another time and to discrete ways of communication – a time when we still whispered. Might it become extinct with new ways of communicating?

Muslin, (c)2008 Cathy Lomax

CL: I think it is the case that social media challenges the specialness of Sensucht if only by speeding up the time it takes to find out every bit of info and every little nuance about a person, song, film , event etc. However it does also enhance the specialness in some ways by creating communities of like-minded people who run blogs or write fan fiction. I realise that this changes the Sensucht connection a little as the special connection becomes a shared secret but it can still be a secret from the outside world.

---

We have developed a fantastic library of Suggested Reading by the artists in This ‘Me’ of Mine. Follow the links here or visit the Bookshop to see all the books suggested so far. We hope you will see something inspiring for your own interests. If a book is unavailable, try the link to Abe Books.

Cathy’s suggested reading:

England is Mine by Michael Bracewell
Stars by Richard Dyer
Blonde by Carol Joyce Oates
Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
From the Beast to the Blonde by Marina Warner
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Austerlitz by WG Sebald
Cries Unheard by Gitta Sereny
Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralinick
The Women we Wanted to Look Like by Brigid Keenan
The Drawings of Holbein in the Collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor Castle by KT Parker, Phaidon Press, 1945
The Andy Warhol Diaries edited by Pat Hackett
Visual and Other Pleasures by Laura Mulvey

Cathy also has a suggested film list:

Letter From an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948)
The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli, 1948)
The Misfits (John Huston, 1961)
Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008)
The Fugitive Kind (Sidney Lumet, 1960)
King Creole (Michael Curtiz, 1958)
Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves, 1968)
American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980)
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes, 1988)
A Royal Affair (Nikolaj Arcel, 2012)
Fishtank (Andrea Arnold, 2009)
Gone to Earth (Powell & Pressburger, 1950)
L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011)
Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)

False Together

Left: Poof! (c)2010 Jane Boyer Right: Whilst I Breathe, I Hope (c)2011 Edd Pearman. View of exhibition opening, 14 March 2013

When I first saw Edd’s piece, Whilst I Breathe, I Hope, a shiver went down my spine. I knew this child and I knew the kind of world he/she inhabited – it was not a nice place. It was a place of mania, fantasy, denial and unreality. It was a place where everything was rosy and no one could see beyond the rims of their rose-tinted glasses, and if forced to, a belligerent, stubborn and an aggressive broiling silence set in. It was the place where I grew up. Admittedly, that is my own reading of Edd’s work, but I was interested to hear Edd’s description of Whilst I Breathe, I Hope as “a Disneyesque, hyper real child-like happiness of senseless hope…” I know what he means; I come from the land of Disney.

Jane Boyer: Your piece Whilst I Breathe, I Hope, on face value communicates hope and a positive outlook.  However, looking deeper, it suggests a positiveness which borders on mania and presents a conformity which denies the acceptance of reality; a blinkered view which would become violent if challenged. What message is in the work for you?

Edd Pearman: A Disneyesque, hyper real child-like happiness of senseless hope, wonderment and joy, beautifully naive and hopelessly unaware of the impending reality of the journey to adulthood that awaits.

Jesus, We Are All Alone, (c)2011 Edd Pearman

JB: Can you describe the process in creating your pieces?  Your work uses digital technology but they are very painterly.  What is behind that relationship of paint and the digital and how do you choose your imagery?

EP: My process has always begun with collage.  I am interested in taking elements from found images or my original photographs and re-contextualising them. The imagery that I use is often figurative because a key interest of mine is the human emotional state.  Lately I’ve been using Photoshop to repaint my collages, to homogenise the sometimes eclectic imagery.   I feel that a painted surface offers its own context; it is a suggestive format, one that allows people to read the artwork in a certain way.  I am recreating the medium of paint as a motif in itself.  I am not a painter, however, these are paintings.  I have become an adept computer user partly because in the real world I am not a dextrous artist.

Omnia Mors Aequat (Death equals all things), Edd Pearman

JB: What have been some of the main influences on your work?

EP: Duality has a strong influence throughout my work, each work maintains a two-fold characteristic in its content i.e. Humour and horror, life and death, hope and despair.  All initially appear to embody one intention, yet possess in equal measure, opposite qualities.

JB: Your “works utilize uniforms from national organizations as reference; for example, St. John’s Ambulance, Boys Scouts, Salvation Army etc. Through [the] depiction of them as mostly solitary figures outside of their individual institutional contexts one sees the disbanded loners as suddenly melancholy, human and vulnerable.  In other pieces, [you]  subvert the often-celebrated cool precision that uniforms tend to imply in order to suggest the other facets associated with them, chaotic, brutal or lethal.”  This quote from your artist statement suggests that you are ‘subverting’, to use your word, the power, strength and status represented by uniforms as well as the glamour and sex appeal associated with uniforms and those who wear them.  What does a uniform represent for you?

Death To Me, Death To Everyone, (c)2008 Edd Pearman

EP: Uniforms are dehumanising.  All efforts to look individual are squashed, psychologically removing one’s identity in favour of a unified group, at once protecting the individual amongst a sea of sameness but also providing one’s enemies with one huge target.   Like a flock of birds or a school of fish, there is safety in numbers, but one is not safe.  My purpose is to bring the focus back onto the individual within the group, and what a lonely situation it is to be in.

JB: Isolation is a major theme in your work, are we more isolated now or less so? Do you feel we experience a different kind of isolation?

EP: Our networks have been able to grow to unprecedented levels.  We can send a message which will reach more people than we ever imagined.  Society has gone viral. This all leads to a false sense of togetherness.  We know so many yet can rely on so few.

---

I’ve asked the artists to share a list of books they find informative for their practice. Follow the links here or visit the Bookshop to see all the books suggested so far. We hope you will see something inspiring for your own interests. Your book purchase made through This ‘Me’ of Mine will help raise funds for the project.

Edd’s suggested reading:
Chuck Palahnuik, short story ‘Exodus’ from Haunted
Deep Water (2006) Documentry film by Lousie Osmond & Jerry Rothwell

Jane’s additions:
Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph edited by Doon Arbus & Marvin Israel

Family Romances

British & Foreign Beetles, ©2004 Annabel Dover, watercolour

‘Scientific observation and tender girlish enthusiasm’ is a curious mix of what seems to be diametrically opposed concepts and practices, but this description by Annabel of her own work is absolutely spot on. Not only does this describe her work but it also suggests there may be another way of approaching observation which includes fascination, delicacy and empathy; a gentle approach to observing the world which allows tenderness to remain, and to remain on equal footing with hard fact. Her works are as delicate as antique Venetian blown glass, and as fragile. Once in her gaze, the objects she works with are given to a relentless and crushing scrutiny; any individual subjected to this kind of probing would soon buckle under the intensity. Innately understanding this, Annabel satisfies herself with observing their objects; a kinder, gentler proposition but one no less penetrating into the soul by Annabel’s eye.

Jane Boyer: On your website you describe yourself as constantly being “drawn to objects and the invisible stories that surround them; [t]hrough their subtle representation…exploring their power as intercessionary agents that allow socially acceptable emotional expression. The work presents itself as a complex mixture of scientific observation and tender girlish enthusiasm which often belies their history.”  That is a wonderful compendium of mystery, fact and fascination.  Do they share equal weight in your explorations?

Christening Gown Ayrshire, ©2002 Annabel Dover, oil on board

Annabel Dover: I really enjoyed the show ‘Life or Theatre’ by Charlotte Salomans. It showed a very personal, fabulous fantasy representation of her life.

My upbringing was constructed from lies and my parents indulged in their own personal dramas. The truth was impossible to decipher and the objects that surrounded my sisters and I were often the only witnesses to ludicrous acts of fantasy and violence – the Freemason’s case with a bag of un-hewn rocks, a sign of dishonour; the naval coat with the buttons ripped off, indicators of an affair that my father had with a Naval officer; the college gown of my sisters’ father, an alcoholic professor; the love letters of his father, Canon for the BBC; the jewellery that represented both my mother’s and my grandmother’s love affairs. These and many other objects highlighted the traumas and the breaks in human relationships that made up the atmosphere of my upbringing. The stories told to me by my family unravelled with the discovery of these indiscreet objects.

The personal stories people tell are fascinating to me, they announce who they would like to be and often contrast with how others might perceive them to actually be.

Water Garden, ©2012 Annabel Dover, water, plants, moss, glass dome

JB: A few years ago Anna White photographed your studio over the course of a year, she asked you to take your own photographs of your daily life and write down thoughts about your images. She included one of these texts and your accompanying photograph on her website. What strikes me is the association you make between the history of the rose bed outside your studio window and your own life history through the rose in the image. Association is a powerful tool for memory, can you explain some of the ways you use association in your work?

AD: I really love it when people communicate with me and I really felt this after the MA follow on show at Central St Martins. Lots of people came up to me and shared their stories. I had made a self-lit cubicle of roughly vitruvian proportions with a theatre blackout curtain and 365 small paintings inside. The images were of family photographs and things I had collected when I worked for an Antique dealer doing house clearances. I was touched by how many people felt a connection with images of other people’s belongings.

Iris’ Stocking, ©2011 Annabel Dover, cyanotype

JB: Your piece, Iris’ Stocking, is a life-size cyanotype of a woman’s seamed stocking from the 40’s. This is about all that can be gleaned from looking at the work, but the addition of the story behind this stocking gives an electrifying significance to the piece. Can you tell us more about the work, the stockings and the significance it all has for you?

AD: My grandmother kept a pair or gossamer thin silk stockings in a drawer along with a lipstick and a handkerchief ready for her husband’s return from the war. He never did return and was pronounced missing presumed dead. She kept these hidden and locked in her bureau and was found along with a photo of her husband in her wallet, after she died. She had remarried a horrible bully, my grandfather.

JB: Carol Mavor has written a beautiful fairy tale of your life, called Like Weeds.  Much of your work deals with the stories attached to objects, or more specifically, the stories people tell of their objects. Do you think of these stories people tell as fairy tales of a sort? Can you describe or define the boundary between real life experience and when the experience becomes a story?

St. Anthony & Putti, ©2010 Annabel Dover, silverpoint

AD: I think they are. I think they change each time we tell them. My stepfather has dementia and no longer knows who I am. He was a POW in WWII and now when he talks about his time there it’s based on the plot of The Great Escape. I think we have always been characters in our own fairy tale. The essay Family Romances, [by Freud], talks about this:

“The child’s imagination becomes engaged in the task of getting free from the parents of whom he now has a low opinion and of replacing them by others, who, as a rule, are of higher social standing. He will make use in this connection of any opportune coincidences from his actual experience, such as his becoming acquainted with the Lord of the Manor or some landed proprietor if he lives in the country or with some member of the aristocracy if he lives in town. Chance occurrences of this kind arouse the child’s envy, which finds expression in a phantasy in which both his parents are replaced by others of better birth.”[1]

---

[1] Freud, S. (1909). Family Romances. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume IX (1906-1908): Jensen’s ‘Gradiva’ and Other Works, 235

---

I’ve asked the artists to share a list of books they find informative for their practice. Follow the links here or visit the Bookshop to see all the books suggested so far. We hope you will see something inspiring for your own interests. Your book purchase made through This ‘Me’ of Mine will help raise funds for the project.

Annabel’s suggested reading:

Archaeology of Knowledge by Michel Foucoult

Art and Artifact by James Putnam

Biographical Objects by Janet Hoskins

Burning with Desire by Geoffrey Batchen

Charles Darwin and Victorian Visual Culture by Jonathan Smith

Reading Boyishly by Carol Mavor

The Archive edited by Charles Merewether

The Emancipated Spectator by Jacques Rancière

The Familial Gaze by Marianne Hirsch

The Politics of Focus by Lindsay Smith

Jane’s additions:

Grimm’s Fairy Tales

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen

If you enjoyed this interview, please follow This ‘Me’ of Mine by clicking the ‘follow’ button below.  You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook, those links are also below.  Pop in and see the great work our partners are doing too! Click on the logos below to go to their sites.

Memory Surfaces

[Imprint] Soft_Terrain (inverted), © 2012 Sandra Crisp, Ink Jet Print

Sandra’s art is some of the most visually complex work I have ever seen; every time I see her work I am amazed all over again. She works with both static and moving images, curiously the boundary between what is static and what is moving seems to fade away; bits of data are set in motion and bits of life are captured – one easily becomes the other in her hands. In this interview we talk about the barrage of media, memory, continuity and the archive. Is stream of consciousness a natural state equal in magnitude to outside media overload? I think so after talking with Sandra.

(NB: click on any of Sandra’s images to zoom into more detail).

Jane Boyer: You’ve mentioned that your process is slow and you engage this purposefully to counter the invasive speed of media information.  Is this engagement with slowness a kind of self-imposed isolation or is it an immersion?  Do either help counter the barrage of media?

Sandra Crisp: I think that my approach does form a kind of immersion really, it is key to my working process which evolves gradually over time. People have often commented that the work is very complex. It requests an action of slowing down from within to take in the density of detail. I am not sure that I can claim that this slows down the barrage out there, but the intention is definitely to provide a sense of contemplation or slowing down – a counter action.

Pancake Ice (cluster), © 2012 Sandra Crisp, Ink Jet Print

When I began working digitally just over ten years ago, there seemed to be a general idea in the area of fine art that working within this medium was somehow faster or easier, that the results are impersonal or detached. In fact, most off-the-shelf software is marketed to perform industry image or film editing tasks ever faster and therefore more economically. Each new software update offers an almost obsessive increased speed factor as a main selling point; I still really enjoy the challenge of using out-of-date software versions to address this issue of built in obsolescence. The work is not really about using the latest technology more about using what is around me and readily available, continuing the idea of digital bricolage in my practice.

JB: It strikes me in looking at your Work-in-Progress posts, the notes you make are very intimate much like notes in a studio notebook intended for the artist’s eyes only, yet you choose to make them public.  What is behind the removal of this boundary between private and public and why have you chosen to do it with such a complex mode as stream of consciousness thinking about your working process?

SC: My practice largely revolves around process, so I have approached the blog as I would any other new process; testing it out, trying to explore its form from a fresh angle. From a practice point of view, I am really interested in whether doing these regular informal updates will take the work itself in new directions, becoming entwined with the creative process itself or remain as a diary or record. For me, a stream of consciousness is not a complex approach at all as this is exactly how I work, by holding on to different ideas and developing them through thought process and memory, aided by digital technology and the archive, until connections evolve between previously unrelated elements. The blog format does not have to follow a traditional written literary or academic structure with sentences, punctuation, line and paragraphs, and have any a definite start and end point; it can be open ended, more like an open dialogue and that suits my way of working really well.

Diagram (artificial tree), © 2010 Sandra Crisp, Ink Jet Print

JB: Your own technique of collecting pieces of information presents a ‘compossible’ world, which you relate to personal memory, your own continuity. What is behind your work ‘The Bigger Picture’?

SC: ‘The Bigger Picture’ uses multiple thumbnail visuals found online and scanned media visuals  arranged within a grid formation and contact-sheet format; visuals are continually erased and reworked until the work hovers upon the boundary of disintegration and erasure: Information reduced to a near-abstract mosaic.  Similar to other works in the same series, the image addresses meaning, or loss of this; traces of figures and objects are just discernible but their exact origins or source has become blurred. A narrative seems to be present, but is totally fragmented. The title of the work – ‘The Bigger Picture’ is asking the viewer to stand back and look at the overall context- to see the bigger picture and question the continual everyday bombardment of information; that was the idea anyway.

The Bigger Picture, © 2010 Sandra Crisp, Ink Jet Print

JB: “Images with their origins in the mass media become ingrained in memory – attached to other bits of personal information, ideas and concepts:  A cyclical process of internalising information from ‘out there’, through my own thinking space and then releasing it outwards again…. Collecting, collating, making sense and discovering what is meaningful.” This is an interesting statement on influence from your portfolio website.  Do you think the influence of mass media is changing the way we perceive?  Do we perceive beyond our own senses; perception as amalgamation rather than perception as sensory?

SC: I think that this is undoubtedly true; we do not witness this entire media as passive bystanders by looking in from the outside. Popular culture, the media, and more recently the proliferation of communication media surround us, influencing how we navigate our world. Perception may be altered through both amalgamation over time and also via direct sensory input or experience, we know that we are operating within electronic networks but I don’t think anybody actually sits down and thinks about that directly!

Soft Terrain, © 2011 Sandra Crisp, Ink Jet Print

JB: Do you feel this transience of information means we are beginning to construct our memories, in the sense of filling in the blanks, and does the archive present a structure to do this? Do you agree with many emerging artists that memory cannot be trusted?

SC: Maybe this is why Facebook as a form of vast public archive/database is so popular – by uploading personal photographs and information we are constructing memory, using it as a way of editing and ascertaining what is important; filling in the blanks. So yes, I think that the archive does offer a structure for this. I often think of my work, both still and moving images as memory surfaces particularly when I am working with pixels on screen. There, transient and borrowed information is anchored and reconfigured until new meanings are formed; a process of filtering the digital until it fuses with my own memory and associations.  Recollection and memory is affected by so many different inputs and stimuli, therefore, in this data driven age where the information we absorbs is transient and in continual flux it would seems that memory can be trusted ever less.

---

I’ve asked the artists to share a list of books they find informative for their practice. Follow the links here or visit the Bookshop to see all the books suggested so far. We hope you will see something inspiring for your own interests. Your book purchase made through This ‘Me’ of Mine will help raise funds for the project.

Sandra’s suggested reading:

Ai Weiwei Speaks with Hans Ulrich Obrist by Hans Ulrich Obrist & Ai WeiWei
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit by Sherry Turkle
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle
The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable living by Fritjof Capra
O.M. Ungers: Morphologies, City Metaphors by O.M. Ungers
Chance (Documents of Contemporary Art) Whitechapel Art Gallery edited by Margaret Iverson
Digital Art (World of Art) by Christiane Paul
Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty edited by Lynne Cooke
Atlas of Cyberspace by Martin Dodge & Rob Kitchin

Jane’s Additions:

Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory: from Auschwitz to Hiroshima to September 11 and Beyond by Gene Ray
New Media in Late 20th Century Art by Michael Rush

If you enjoyed this interview, please follow This ‘Me’ of Mine by clicking the ‘follow’ button below.  You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook, those links are also below.  Pop in and see the great work our partners are doing too! Click on the logos below to go to their sites.

What Are You Prepared to Give in Exchange?

I Don’t Suppose I’ll Ever Go There, ©2011 Kate Murdoch

Kate’s work is a delicate balance of position, association, meaning and value – not necessarily in that order or with the usual expectations.  That is the beauty of Kate’s work; she presents slights which are out-of-joint and off-kilter familiarity which causes profound questioning of assumptions.  What you think you know is not what you knew and as a result memory slides sideways.

Jane Boyer: Tell us about the significance of memory for you and what role it plays in your artwork.

Kate Murdoch: At the heart of my work is an unravelling of memories; the desire to make sense of and preserve certain aspects of the past are a driving force behind it. I work mostly with found objects and the raw material for my artwork comes primarily from the vast collection I’ve accumulated over the years; both from my own life and from those of others. I use this vast mass of memorabilia to tease out and present my memories of childhood and family relationships, conscious of the distorted effect that time can have on real, authentic memory. I’m fascinated by what the objects we surround ourselves with say about us; steeped in social and political history they are a part of our identity, providing us with a sense of self and revealing our connections to the wider world.

JB: In your artist statement you say your practice is ‘a process of selection

Birdcage, ©2009 Kate Murdoch

where you place familiar objects in an unfamiliar environment in order to challenge the viewer’s response’.  What about your own response, what is challenged for you when you reinterpret an object and change the context and significance?  Do you surprise yourself?

KM:  I think my piece Birdcage demonstrates how the placing of familiar objects in an unfamiliar environment can challenge both my own and an audience’s response to it. Though the initial placing of the brass bells within a cage was something I remember doing quite subconsciously, I was surprised retrospectively by the impact of doing so. The ‘ladies’ in the home of my Scottish aunt appealed to me very much as a child. They exuded an air of decency and femininity.  Their crinoline dresses and neat, sash-tied bonnets called to mind rather beautiful, Scarlett O’Hara kind of heroines – pretty and privileged. But there was a darker side as we know and placing these female figurines in a cage, albeit unconsciously, speaks volumes I think about the hidden aspects of these women’s lives – the repression, domination and dependency.

JB: In your blog Keeping it Going on a-n Artists Talking, you speak about value, both the perceived value of an object which you have made available for your audience to take (Going for Gold) or the associated value to exchange with something of similar value (10 x 10). It could be said the value we associate with an object is in relation to the depth of emotion we experience in any given situation.  Do you feel this to be true and what have you observed about this relationship through the interactive aspect of your work?

10 x 10, ©2008 – 2012 Kate Murdoch

KM: I’m not sure there’s a definitive answer to this question but in terms of my observations of how the majority of people have interacted with 10×10 so far, then yes, I would say it is true. The emotional attachment we make to any given object can determine its worth in emotional terms as opposed to its monetary value. The very act of bartering adds an emotional reality to the process of exchange that currency somehow lacks. ‘What is an object worth to you?’ is one of the main questions posed by 10×10. ‘How much do you want it and what are you prepared to give in exchange?’

I can give you many good examples of the varying degrees of value and worth; they are contained in the stories people leave behind when they give their objects up for exchange. The woman who gave up a genuine diamond bracelet at the launch of 10×10 for instance demonstrates a really good example of value and worth. On the face of it, the value of a real diamond was high; from her story however, it was clear that the bracelet, in spite of its monetary worth, had become of little personal value to her.

An exchange made by an international student at Lewisham College has an equally poignant ring to it. He exchanged a small candle stub for a larger, unused candle. Living on a very tight budget in order to afford college fees, this student told me that he was doing his best to avoid having to pay for electricity. It was a practical exchange, then on one level – a used-up candle for one with many burning hours – but in terms of value in this case, the new candle represented a kind of life-saver for him.

“The very act of bartering adds an emotional reality to the process of exchange that currency somehow lacks.”

Kate Murdoch

It’s The Little Things, ©2010 Kate Murdoch, detail view

JB: Tell us about your piece It’s The Little Things.  You raise an interesting point in what you ‘think is worth preserving’, tell us about some of the things you’ve chosen to preserve in this piece and why.

KM: The things I chose for this particular piece were largely an emotional response to the clearance of my Nana’s home in which she had lived for some 70 years. The items I salvaged were reminders of the many times I’d spent with my Nana as a child and the close relationship we had. I was trying to hold onto her history as well as my own through preserving them. The pastry cutters, the icing nozzles, the embroidery cottons, thimbles, darning mushroom and tape measure are all reminders of the many domestic skills my Nana taught me. The fun side of my relationship with her is reflected in the lipstick, powder and perfume which she sometimes let me play with at her dressing table. The ancient pocket Bible and the red poppy speak of the history of a woman who lived through two world wars and would engage me with her stories about the war as she taught me the rules of a waste-not-want-not life.

JB: We’ve spoken about the personal exchange and value inherent in your work; there is a sense of nostalgia for personal communication and connections underlying your work.  What are your thoughts on digital communications and the ‘faceless’ interactions which are commonplace for us now?  In a way, written communication has been reinvigorated through digital communications, but have we lost the personal connection or have we strengthened those connections?

Gentlemen, ©2009 Kate Murdoch

KM: That’s a very big question. But does it necessarily have to be face to face? Does ‘faceless’ communication lose any true sense of feeling connected with other people? I’ve certainly had a lot of face to face conversations where I’ve felt very unconnected with the person I’m speaking with – you just don’t connect with everybody – it’s a fact of life! I’ve had e-mail and twitter conversations, on the other hand where communication has been surprisingly personal and intimate when discussing certain matters.

I find forums like twitter and facebook working well for me because of my partial deafness; I find writing a more direct and clear way of communicating as it leaves less room for misinterpretation. I’m in close contact via e-mail and twitter with a few people – mainly artists – who I’ve never actually met face to face. A lot of formality is broken down in the way people communicate via digital communications such as twitter and facebook which to my mind cuts to the chase and gets down very quickly to the core of good, open and honest communication. I know it has its critics, but I actually think you can learn a great deal about a person by the way they communicate on social media and I gravitate towards those who I believe share my own fundamental life values.

---

I’ve asked the artists to share a list of books they find informative for their practice. Follow the links here or visit the Bookshop to see all the books suggested so far. We hope you will see something inspiring for your own interests. Your book purchase made through This ‘Me’ of Mine will help raise funds for the project.

Kate’s suggested reading:

Evocative Objects: Things We Think with edited by Sherry Turkle
Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris by Leanne Shapton
Interpreting Objects and Collections  edited by Susan M. Pearce
Contemporary Art and Memory by Joan Gibbons
The Memory Box by Margaret Forster
Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler
The Whale’s Song by Dyan Sheldon
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks
The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

Jane’s Additions:

Color Photographs by Marie Cosindas
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry

If you enjoyed this interview, please follow This ‘Me’ of Mine by clicking the ‘follow’ button below.  You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook, those links are also below.  Pop in and see the great work our partners are doing too! Click on the logos below to go to their sites.

Without Any Voice

Sarah has had a great deal of experience working with children, her background in teaching art to special needs children along with degrees in psychology and dance scenography has given her a unique view of how we communicate, especially through body language.  She has a particular interest in vulnerability and this body-language communication.  For Sarah, what is vulnerable is not weak, but she sees a strength and dignity when people allow vulnerability to remain visible.  She sees faces and hands as the most expressive parts of the body with our faces becoming a roadmap to our lives as we age.  Gender plays an important role in this ‘roadmap’ for Sarah because she recognizes the difference males and females have in response to experiences. She also believes skin has a unique ability to communicate the power of touch and is important in defining self-image.

Jane Boyer: Your work has revolved around skin.  What is it you are exploring through skin and what does skin represent for you?

Sketchbook journal collage by Sarah Hervey

Sarah Hervey: Skin represents to me, the boundary between the necessary social world and the internal struggles that people have.  I’m exploring boundaries really and surfaces, I’m exploring the ideas around what we see on the surface which protects what’s underneath, but also exposes something about a person.  It started with my interest in ageing skin and how it can be like a map of a person’s emotions because the creases and all the experiences start to stay there as evidence of what somebody has felt underneath their skin.

JB: Body language is also important in your work.  Do you believe body language expresses the psychology of a person in ways not communicated verbally?

SH: Yes, it does.  I became interested in this because I worked with children who had language difficulties and children in difficult situations, like when a child is ill in hospital and they’re surrounded by very scary procedures and people they don’t know.  Their body language is very important; the body language of those people dealing with them is also quite critical.  I went on to teach children with emotional difficulties who had experienced confusing body language.  So that was of general interest for me and it was enhanced when I did my MA in design for dance because dancers utilize the body to express language in physical theatre, which I love.  It exists without any voice, it’s pure body language.  It’s absolutely extraordinary how much you can understand without anybody ever speaking.

Purple Nude (c) 2011 Sarah Hervey

JB: Your painting Purple Nude conveys a sense of this non-verbal communication in the relationship of the figure’s feet and a very distinct line on the floor.  This relationship, in essence, is the painting.  How do you view this relationship and does it feel like a visual expression of non-verbal communication to you?

SH: Yes, I think it completely does.  When I did that painting I felt very vulnerable and I was pretty consumed with my own vulnerability for quite a long time into doing the picture itself, then I began to notice how vulnerable the model was.  I think it was just by chance he chose to put his feet behind that line, but because he has his feet behind the line he’s keeping to some boundary.

I wasn’t expecting that particular model that night and it was a bit of a surprise because I think he must have been the oldest person I’ve ever drawn or painted.  I had been thinking a lot about vulnerability and ageing anyway, I felt this was a huge opportunity to paint something I was interested in, but because I wasn’t expecting it and this was a real person and not something I’d organised, I had to really pull myself together and get on with it.  I think that’s probably why there is so much that came out in the painting.  I had to do it quickly as well, it was just one evening.

‘Images of assumptions’, sketchbook journal collage by Sarah Hervey

JB: Much of the vulnerability you are interested in and you explore is based in gender issues and ageing.  Can you tell us what it is particularly about vulnerability, experienced through gender and age, which interests you?

SH: I think there has been a lot of research into why women live longer on the whole and have a resilience somehow, yet the way we are supposed to attract men is to be vulnerable, the weaker sex, so there’s all that dynamic which is interesting.  Because I have this idea about skin and how your history shows on your face, so if you’ve had a life where you’ve felt vulnerable it will begin to show.  As your body gets older you just appear more vulnerable because your skin gets thinner, your bones aren’t as strong, you find it more difficult to hold your head up straight and keep your back straight and so your body starts to cow.  The different way men and women deal with that interests me; how we feel about that is the internal part of skin, then the way society looks at you is the external part. I mean, the essence of being female or male is different and I feel it is important to struggle to understand more precisely the positions of men and women within these boundaries.  My point of view is as a woman.  I can’t understand my own vulnerability and the vulnerability of women without understanding the vulnerability of men.

---

In an effort to raise funds for This ‘Me’ of Mine, I’ve asked the artists to share a list of books they find informative for their practice. Follow the links here or visit the BOOKSHOP to see all the books suggested so far. We hope you will see something inspiring for your own interests.

Now is a great time to purchase through the This ‘Me’ of Mine bookshop because The Book Depository is offering great discounts on purchases, for example most of Sarah’s reading list is on sale!

If you enjoyed this interview, be sure to participate in our This ‘Me’ of Mine Companion Book head-count, see the footer section at the bottom of the page for the sign-up form and more information.

Sarah’s Reading List:

The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard

The Book of Skin by Steven Connor

One Place After Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity  by Miwon Kwon

The Thinking Hand by Juhani Pallasmaa

The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses  by Juhani Pallasmaa

On Kindness by Adam Phillips & Barbara Taylor

Touch Me: The Mystery of the Surface by Gregor Eichinger

Art and Feminism by Peggy Phelan

Jane’s Additions:

Alice Neel by Ann Temkin (follow the link to Abe Books)

Lucian Freud Paintings by Robert Hughes

Straight from the Nerves

Untitled Nude, (c)2011 Shireen Qureshi, oil and charcoal on canvas

Shireen Qureshi was a studio member of Cor Blimey Arts in 2011 and it was on one of my working trips to Core Gallery when I first met Shireen.  I remember the moment so vividly, I was passing her studio and the door happened to be open; as I glanced in I was stopped in my tracks.  Sitting alone and unnoticed, as if set aside purposefully, was her untitled and unfinished nude painting.  It pulled me in emotionally and literally as I stepped into her studio, that is when I met Shireen.  We talked briefly about her work then I went on about my day, but I couldn’t get Shireen’s painting out of my mind.  Feeling a little unsure in that moment of how it would fit in overall with the exhibition, I trusted my gut instinct and invited Shireen to show the work with This ‘Me’ of Mine, asking her if she would leave the painting exactly as it was and not finish it.  She was a little nervous about my request but gave it some serious consideration and finally agreed – I’m delighted she did.

Jane Boyer: Your Untitled Nude has a very definite feeling of movement and struggle, the figure is almost writhing, but the hand is quite firmly placed and supports or propels the body’s turning.  Can you tell us more about this painting and why the hand is black?  It’s the thing that attracted me to this work.

Blue Lamp, (c)2011 Shireen Qureshi, oil on canvas

Shireen Qureshi:This painting was painted very instinctively – straight from the nerves, and for me, was left at quite an early and exciting stage of its development. Within my mind this painting developed specifically from the simple action of a body turning over in bed, or getting out of bed. I wanted the body to be engulfed in a dark space. The heavy sense of contrast in this work is the result of this struggle, to create a kind of dark in which the body remains illuminated, but I like the way the attempt to achieve this has resulted in a body which has almost been doused in a liquid darkness which encircles it. I am also happy with the way certain borders and parts of the body are lost. The hand is black because I was trying to force it downwards into the darkness, and also pin the body to the canvas so that it was no longer floating in space but supported within a suggested reality. I like the way Francis Bacon used things like syringes or arrows in his work to pin his bodies down – I often try to use similar devices as I like to secure my more free flowing bodies to something. It’s like a full stop, locking the body-prisoner in place.

Fall, (c)2010 Shireen Qureshi, oil on canvas

JB: You share other things with Bacon, the domestic settings, the violence, the bodily functions and the ‘body-prisoner’ as you put it; the self subjected to context in other words.  It could be argued the self in Bacon’s work exists between annihilation and the struggle in the moments just before annihilation, an idea suggested by his work with crucifixions, his screams and his interest in paintings of abattoirs, butchers and meat.[1]   How do you view this struggle and the annihilation of the self?

SQ: Bacon has been a huge influence on me and I think that this struggle is an interesting moment to paint because it captures a person perhaps at a moment when they are most present in the form of an instinctive, uncontrollable self. This moment of high drama gives passage to an altered state of being, and as Bacon stated ‘I’m just trying to make images as accurately off my nervous system as I can.’[2]  What could be more real than the presence of a body in the face of its destruction, it is in these moments that a person becomes aware, in a visceral sense, of what they are made up of – organs, blood, skin and bone.

Hand in Hair, (c)2010 Shireen Qureshi, oil on canvas

JB: Deleuze suggests we are an event; meaning that out of a chaos in which conditions have come together to form a ‘one’ or have passed through ‘a screen’ which allows something rather than nothing to happen.[3]  There is a sense of ‘event’ in your tableaus and the figures are that ‘event’, as if we are witnessing the coalescing of a self, how do you see this?  Do you feel the passage of time is relevant to the self?

SQ: It is interesting that you suggest that we are witnessing the coalescing of a self in my work because in my mind I am more interested in breaking down the body, of rupturing boundaries. I often initiate a painting by making it look real and then trying to break it down, by overlapping bodies or breaking apart skin and bone, I suppose in that sense the aim for me is towards chaos rather than from it. But I think that this is a very interesting idea, especially the sense of an ‘event’ you describe in my work, forcing my viewers into the role of witness.

Lying Body, (c)2010 Shireen Qureshi, oil on canvas

I think that if the paintings have created any sense of inescapable drama pinning both my figures and viewers in place, then this is an achievement in itself.

From my point of view, the passage of time is interesting because it is within a space of time that metamorphosis and transformation can occur. I would like to create a sense of movement, an undulation within each of my paintings as if they were bubbles of captured space and time. I think that time is inescapably relevant to the self because it is within time that a self is built or deconstructed, subjected to the violence of existence, and within which the self moves, inevitably, towards death.

 

Read Struggle in the Moment of Difference on Art Pie.

---

[1] ‘Francis Bacon (1910-1992) Interview with David Sylvester’, Art in Theory 1900-2000, ed. Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, p. 635-9.

“I’ve always been very moved by pictures about slaughterhouses and meat, and to me they belong very much to the whole thing of the Crucifixion.  There’ve been extraordinary photographs which have been done of animals just being taken up before they were slaughtered; and the smell of death.  We don’t know, of course, but it appears by these photographs that they’re so aware of what is going to happen to them, they do everything to attempt to escape.”

[2] Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester, London, Thames & Hudson p.82

[3] The Fold, Giles Delueze, 1^st ed Athlone Press, 1993, reprinted Continuum Publishing, 2006, p.86

---

In an effort to raise funds for This ‘Me’ of Mine, I’ve asked the artists to share a list of books they find informative for their practice. Follow the links here or visit the BOOKSHOP to see all the books suggested so far. We hope you will see something inspiring for your own interests.

If you enjoyed this interview, be sure to participate in our This ‘Me’ of Mine Companion Book head-count, see the footer section at the bottom of the page for the sign-up form and more information.

Shireen’s Reading List:

Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester

The Eyes Mind: Bridget Riley: Collected Writings 1965-1999 by Bridget Riley and Robert Kudielka

Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes

Blue of Noon by Georges Bataille

In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki

Francesca Woodman by Chris Townsend

The Logic of Sensation by Gilles Deleuze  (note: this can be found under Aly Helyer’s suggested reading in the Bookshop)

Jane’s Additions:

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Strangers to Ourselves by Julia Kristeva

Deleuze: The Clamour of Being by Alain Badiou

---

If you enjoy what you see here, follow the progress of the project by clicking the ‘follow’ button at the bottom of the page and share content you really like using the ‘share this’ buttons below each article.

We would love to talk with you, feel free to leave us a comment too.

If you would like to support the project contact me at ThisMeofMine@gmail.com

THANK YOU!

A Barely Responsive Exterior

I first saw Melanie’s work last year in the 2011 Marmite Prize exhibition at the Nunnery in Bow.  I was struck by the delicacy, fragility and the overwhelming presence in her painting Woman with Cardigan.  It was this sense of presence which confirmed for me it should be in This ‘Me’ of Mine.   How could such an overwhelming presence be perceived from a view of someone’s back rather than the face, where it would be expected, and what did this suggest for these issues of self and identity?  Were the curious mixture of pattern and texture in her clothing personal choices or were these visible clues to circumstances imposed upon this woman’s life?  These were compelling questions and the basis for my choice of Mel’s work.

Not Dead Yet (c)2010 Melanie Titmuss oil on canvas

Jane Boyer: Your subjects are often elderly, you are a young adult; what are you exploring in the topic of ageing and the elderly?

MT: People are often drawn to images that depict the appealing side of old age. I have been looking at these romantic versions as well as the social and moral [issues], particularly the care of the elderly, the sacrifice involved. Sitting in an old people’s home as a young adolescent really stuck with me. I found the banality of it really shocking. The quality of life is so diminished and yet the confirmation of life lived, so explicit, and in some cases, so contained, unreachable. What was most striking was the isolation of each person in the room. They are agonizingly remote from each other, from their visitors. There is great pathos in the discrepancy between the outward and inner life.

In response to the issues of abuse, invisibility and poverty surrounding ageing, I painted Not Dead Yet, a vivid and joyful scene of an elderly couple dancing. There is an element of fading away, a nostalgic nod to a bygone age, living with memories – the old man is featureless and she shimmers somehow, almost stepping off the corner of the painting but the overall effect is life affirming. There is warmth and laughter and tenderness.

JB: There is a delicacy and a fragility to your painting technique, is this at all related to your subject of ageing? Did you have a sense of the boundary between your projections and perceptions of her [Woman with Cardigan] and the reality in the experience of her presence?

Woman with Cardigan (c)2010 Melanie Titmuss oil on canvas

MT: Woman with Cardigan was painted from a sketch from life so it has this quality more so. Having to ‘fill in the gaps’, I found that I projected qualities onto her. A friend described her as ‘kind of not here, elsewhere’ but her actual presence was overwhelming. When I’d completed the sketch in her presence, I realised I’d captured something else: a frail, ethereal version of a tall, robust woman who was animated and resolved to stand for her entire conversation with somebody seated. Picking up on certain visual signs, I immediately endowed her with old age; exaggerating her ‘old lady’ characteristics to create the archetypal one, stooped and weighed down by this enormous cardigan. A mind’s picture will conjure a visceral impression, based on the physical sensation of a person nearby – the potential for interaction. To engage with another person is a process of searching and illuminating and this was the case without knowing her face, or her knowing mine.

JB: Your paintings are quite psychologically intense, not in their struggle but in their quietude.  They capture a sense of living a life and the effects of that living, the compromises, the pain, the joy.  When you connect with these individuals in that moment of observation, what passes through your mind?

MT: How people carry their lives around with them. I don’t wonder particularly what the experiences are that have bought them to this moment, just what is visible and what is not, how the body responds to the ravages of ones life’s events. How fragile and unforgiving it is. How a face at rest is open to interpretation. I want to portray them just as they appear, not to project suffering or any emotion onto them. I have painted sleeping teenagers, women talking on their mobile phones, someone stealing a microwave – I am looking across the entire spectrum of possibilities, encounters and circumstances. The pain and joy in all of it.

Bupleigh Mansions (c)2012 Melanie Titmuss oil on canvas

JB:  “Within a constant flow of people, anonymity and custom create a definite one of interior and exterior. So even though I observe and paint individuals, it’s the collective that I’m interested in.”  That is a really interesting statement on the source of the interior and exterior self, can you explain that further?  What is in the ‘collective’ that interests you?

MT: The connection to place, each other and ourselves; the sensations and movement that are specifically bound to transient space form an experience that is both internal and shared. I am talking mostly about non-space – i.e. mall space, suburban space, corporate space, generic or interchangeable space – the space of postmodernity. They are communal areas that stimulate a unique level of perception and consciousness, and the habitual presence of strangers can inspire a sense of participation, reassurance and continuity.  It is deceptive and the energy of it, quite seductive, ‘dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite.’ Though for many, these journeys take place within one’s ordinary sphere of existence, they are far from mundane.  Merging into the crowd, with all those arriving and departing, ‘you are delivered from all depth – a brilliant mobile superficial neutrality, a challenge to meaning and profundity, a challenge to nature and culture.’[1]

Man waiting for a tram (c)2011 Melanie Titmuss oil on canvas

JB: Do we see the toll taken by socialization in your paintings?

MT: All of the individuals I’ve selected to paint could only be in a metropolis. Fully contained, there is no interaction and therefore no projection at all – no awareness, no anticipation (on their part). Because of this, no decision or distinction is made regarding what to put forward, or reveal.  All that is visible is a barely responsive exterior.  The sheer volume and flow of people in the city can contribute to a sense of ‘conscious-less’, and is usually an opportunity to switch off.  This indifference, characteristic to the figures in my paintings, suggests the social is almost taken away.  You wonder what is revealed in this state of consciousness, just mindless projections on to others perhaps.

 

---

[1] Jean Baudrillard. America, Verso Books, 1989, p.124

---

In an effort to raise funds for This ‘Me’ of Mine, I’ve asked the artists to share a list of books they find informative for their practice. Follow the links here or visit the Bookshop to see all the books suggested so far. We hope you will see something inspiring for your own interests.

If you enjoyed this interview, be sure to participate in our This ‘Me’ of Mine Companion Book head-count, see the footer section at the bottom of the page for the sign-up form and more information.

Melanie’s Reading List:

On Photography by Susan Sontag

Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity by Marc Augé

The Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym

The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies by Roland Barthes

Mythologies by Roland Barthes

London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd

The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton

The Tourist Gaze by John Urry

The Letters of Van Gogh by Ronald de Leeuw & Arnold J. Pomerans

America by Jean Baudrillard

Jane’s Additions:

The Life and Death of Images by Diarmuid Costello and Dominic Willsdon

Wim Wenders: Places, Strange and Quiet by Wim Wenders

Matisse in Morocco by Jack Cowart

Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes

---

If you enjoy what you see here, follow the progress of the project by clicking the ‘follow’ button at the bottom of the page and share content you really like using the ‘share this’ buttons below each article.

Leave us a comment too, we would love to talk with you.

If you would like to support the project contact me at ThisMeofMine@gmail.com

THANK YOU!

Living in the Constant

Film still from ‘Nightfall’, (c)2011 Anthony Boswell

Anthony Boswell is an active blogger on Artists Talking, the a-n blogging platform for artists.  I’ve had the pleasure of watching Anthony’s practice unfold and last year I was struck by seeing his work ‘Time Box’ pictured in an essay written by my colleague and friend Becky Huff Hunter.  I went back to Anthony’s work and had a closer look.  I hadn’t actually met Anthony and our connection through Artists Talking had been brief and intermittent with only occasional comments to each other on our respective blogs.  Anthony’s blog posts often deal with issues of time spent waiting and the effects this kind of relationship with time can have on creativity and one’s emotional and mental states.  In his ‘Time Box’, I saw an interesting statement on the influence of memory and time, and the transformation that takes place in time and us as a result.

Jane Boyer: ‘Place’ is of major importance to your work.  You have achieved an interesting merging of identity and context through ‘place’; it’s as if ‘place’ represents both an identity and a context simultaneously.  Can you tell us more about the significance this has for you and your work?

Painting ‘D’, (c)2012 Anthony Boswell, acrylic on canvas, 23.5 x 29.5cm

Anthony Boswell: The real basis for my paintings is the home, specifically my own home, because what I want to achieve is capturing ideas of intimacy.  Also the effects of time on place, so thinking about my own life within the home and how time affects the fears, doubts, hopes and wishes as well as daily activities.  I feel it’s a place where I can try to exercise some control over the environment by controlling time within that environment.  The idea of the clock running forwards but appearing to run backwards in ‘Time Box’ is about being stuck in the middle of that, about freezing time.  I don’t think I could achieve that anywhere outside of the home, because the home is such an intimate place.  The subject I deal with is about intimate things.  You can also get the feelings of loss, because of the things that aren’t there as much as they are there; this creates an air of melancholy in the work.

JB: Becky Huff Hunter refers to the temporal loop and the endlessly returning of ‘something missing’ in the melancholic state in the essay, ‘On Time, Repetition and Melancholia’, she wrote about your work.  Is there ‘something missing’ or has the loop replayed itself so often it has become an entity of its own for you?

“The ticking clock in the mirror runs backwards, indicating disorder. Its face points up, directing one’s gaze perpetually back and forth between the real and the reflected scene. This doubled stage disrupts the completeness of conventional viewing, fixing instead a boxed-in, spatial and temporal loop…[i]n a psychoanalytic account, the painful, desiring state of melancholia is full of such returns, endlessly
circling in one’s mind something perceived to be missing.”

from ‘On Time, Repetition and Melancholia’

AB: I think the loop has become an actual entity of itself.  The subject does repeat itself very often.  I find myself working within the framework of the loop.  My very self is stuck within the loop; melancholy comes because I am stuck in the loop.  Perhaps what’s missing is what’s outside that loop or the fear of its ceasing to be a loop and become something that runs forward in time.  All those fears and hopes, everything the intimacy within the home brings, begins to open up to a greater loss and eventually time will bring the loss of things because of the infinite nature of time; everything outside of time is infinite.  As Becky says, there is always a longing with melancholy.

Coign of Vantage, (c)2012 Anthony Boswell, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 20cm

JB: Your latest work is a series of paintings in your house, however the house is not the subject of these paintings; the emotional translation of a life lived, light, shadow and time is the subject.  It is a context but in your work it is less a context than an identity.  It is not wholly your identity because the place & space influences how you feel.  Have the dissolutions of these boundaries given you freedom or are you contained and confined, captured like the light sources in your paintings?

AB: It’s quite an interesting way of looking at it.  The subject is as you say.  The light starts to reveal something that is always slightly out of reach.  I’ve never thought of it from that point of view, but it’s interesting to think about how much of the control is being forced upon me rather than the other way around and maybe that’s why there is always such a sense of melancholy longing because I’m never satisfying what I’m trying to achieve.  Maybe I’m not actually in control.  For what I’m trying to achieve in my paintings, life outside of the house is quite insignificant in a way.  But thinking about the fact I’m not able to make a painting unless I feel comfortable with the situation in the house, the light or a certain part of the room and how it all fits in together; that is actually out of my control.  I can’t control the light, how it comes into the house or what type of light.  There are boundaries being put on my creating of the paintings.  Until the light reveals itself in a certain way and shadows are made in a certain way, I don’t witness anything and I can’t make the artwork until that situation arises.  Waiting for it to come along is quite a powerful thing because I never know when it’s going to happen, sometimes it comes quite quickly and spontaneously and sometimes you have to wait.

Time Box, (c)2010 Anthony Boswell, mixed media construction, 20.3 x 27.9 x 20.3cm

JB: ‘Time Box’ is a surreal statement on time, memory and recall in the sense of ‘knowing’ the truth of something rather than simply remembering the specific details of it.  This knowing and memory can be at odds sometimes and time can be the disrupter between the two.  Is this the message of ‘Time Box’ for you?  What do you see in ‘Time Box’?

AB: The message of Time Box for me is being contained.  It’s about being inside an environment that is really familiar and trying to stay in the present; you don’t want to necessarily go back to the past but you definitely don’t want to run into the future, so it’s trying to keep within the loop, trying to be completely stationary in the present.  But also apart from being something familiar, it’s a space which can be quite intense as well.  You can’t sit comfortably within it.  It gives a sense that you’re looking down on a life which isn’t your own.  There is an unfamiliarity amongst the familiar within it.

JB: How does this reflect on your view of self and identity?

AB: Identity is quite a difficult thing for me because my own view of identity is a unique personal view rather than understanding things as cultural identity.  I mean obviously I understand cultural identity and identity in a wider scope, but my own view of identity is to think of everyone as an individual.  Though I’m really aware of everyone else in the world, I’m not aware of people being part of a culture or a wider context of things.  When I think about it, I just think of all these people with their own unique personal identities.  I think I’ve just imagined them in their space in their privacy grappling with the same things I’m grappling with, you know with the fears, the longing and the doubts.  I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.  It’s just wrapped up with self isn’t it?  I suppose I want everyone to deal with the bigger questions by coming to know themselves.  I find if you know yourself you come to know a lot more about the wider context of things.

---

In an effort to raise funds for This ‘Me’ of Mine, I’ve asked the artists to share a list of books they find informative for their practice.  Follow the links here or visit the Bookshop to see all the books suggested so far.  We hope you will see something inspiring for your own interests.

Anthony’s Reading List:

Art? No Thing! By Fré Ilgen

Paths to the Absolute by John Golding

Peter Lanyon: Modernism and the Land by Andrew Causey

Jane’s Additions:

Mark Rothko by David Anfam

Francesca Woodman Photography by Julia Bryan-Wilson & Corey Keller

The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

---

If you enjoy what you see here, follow the progress of the project by clicking the ‘follow’ button at the bottom of the page and share content you really like using the ‘share this’ buttons below each article.

Leave us a comment too, we would love to talk with you.

If you would like to support the project contact me at ThisMeofMine@gmail.com

THANK YOU!

I Am a Black Box

David Riley is an artist’s artist – he works with raw ideas and even when these concepts have attained a ‘result’, as David calls them, they are still wide open for interpretation, further development and wide ranging tangential possibilities.  His work could be seen as a springboard to so many other ideas in so many possible media.  I continue to be amazed by his output and the sheer magnitude of his inspiration pool.

David also is a keen blogger and has written several blogs on a-n Artists Talking.  Two of his blogs have been chosen as ‘Choice Blog’, the most recent by Linda Stupart.  FORMAT is an artwork and a unique blog, as Stupart points out in her article; it is uniquely David Riley.    It uses the a-n blogging platform to explore the “facilities and limits within the context of an a-n blog,” as David writes in his intro.  He explains, “this should not, in any way, be taken as criticism. The intent is to explore the limit of the facilities offered by an a-n blog (implied and actual) as a form of visual enquiry”.

Stupart says, “Riley’s collapsing of form and content then is notable within the collective blog imaginary, which often fails to be critical of its own formal structure in a way that other types of practice could never get away with.  Through an explication of limitation FORMAT also reminds us of the incredible potential of blogs as medium, as well as making visible the otherwise invisible restrictions of the institutionalized blog – a very big, fairly convoluted white cube, but a container nonetheless.”

See what I mean – a springboard wide open for possibilities.

Jane Boyer: The statement on each of your blogs reads, “I am a black box, an abstract device evolved to hide the complexities within. Given the appropriate stimulus, I can be triggered to display a transient pop-up model of my inner self and disclose a little of what would otherwise remain secret.” 

Beyond the stated reason ‘to hide the complexities within’, why do you present yourself as an object and your inner self as a ‘transient pop-up model’?

David Riley: I don’t intend to ‘present myself as an object’; a black box is a system metaphor so I use it to present myself as a system, a complex system that no one can fully understand (not even me).

The ‘pop-up model’ idea was planted by Richard Taylor when he interviewed me for an a-n Degrees Unedited Blogger Profile back in 2010. The idea meshed quite naturally with my experience as an engineer, where I often analysed systems that were new to me by treating them as a black box in order to understand their true function.  At art college we were encouraged to self-analyse our output and I found myself not fully understanding how I travelled from initial concept to final outcome. So, now I find it useful to think of myself as a black box where every new line of enquiry has the potential to reveal more of my inner (often hidden) self and my motivations for doing what I do.

679-607-700 (c)2012 David Riley, post-it note and ink

JB: Your blog REMNANTS could be seen as a companion piece to FORMAT in its use of the blogging platform limitations.  Your introduction statement is a philosophical one and reminds me of Deleuze’s observation “Underneath all reason lies delirium, and drift.”[1]  You state:

“Everything is T R A N S I E N T.

Although the tools here at a-n (and in general on the world wide web) try very hard to make everything permanent, this is not the natural order.  Any impression of permanence is illusionary. The nature of the universe is for everything to return to the universe for reuse.  I have removed (from this blog) everything the a-n system allows me to delete. I could hide the rest by unpublishing it, but this does not release the storage space for reuse.

So here we have a new outcome based on everything that has gone before: the R E M N A N T S.”

Can you comment on that existential triumvirate – memory, transience and reason, in relation to your enquiries and do you feel they are as present in your work as for someone who is working in more traditional media?

DR: If memory is knowledge and experience; if transience is the coming and going of a new influence or a loss of knowledge through lack of use; and if reason is the use of knowledge and experience to filter the infinite possibility into a manageable focus; then yes these factors are most definitely present in my work.

JB: You have two works in This ‘Me’ of Mine, twitter user names: coded (follow the link on David’s page to see the virtual version of twitter names) and bar EP blues (kinetatic), tell us what is behind the further coding of what is often already a code name in the twitter piece.

DR: I chose to translate the twitter user name into a different form, a form that would retain the full meaning but hide it in plain sight. As I wanted to use twitter, this had to be in a form that would still fit within the limitation of a tweet. If you can read my code then you can read the name, the meaning hasn’t changed. But even this is little more than a side-effect. My concept was to take the names and present them in what is to me a visually interesting way while at the same time engaging new people who might interact with me and stimulate new paths of exploration.

stringing code triptych (c)2012 David Riley, wood, steel angle brackets, screws, steel hooks, bungee cord and nylon bungee hooks, editable wall mountable sculpture/ re-mountable installation; 144cm x 144cm x 4cm

JB: I admire the ease with which you move between codes and systems.  Your latest enquiries, stringing words, involve stringing bungee cords which represent the alphabet, short phrases and now names.  You mentioned earlier that you see text as code and so all language is code to you, does this affect your notions of communication and how you relate to others?

DR: My life has been riddled with codes, as a systems engineer I see them everywhere; consequently I am very comfortable with codes. On reflection, using codes may be a strategy, being an artist is relatively new and I prefer to keep an aspect of the process familiar while I explore other aspects for the first time. Changing one variable at a time is a familiar strategy for experimentation, working with the familiarity of codes allows me to handle the unfamiliarity of materials and reactions to my work. It helps me focus on the new connections I make with people and ideas through sharing my output.  I am always absorbing new things and this feedback can influence and encourage something new further down the line. It is rare for this process to change my own perspective on the work, but it does happen on occasion, when it does this can lead to a new line of enquiry or a variation on an old one.

Maybe there will come a time when I move on and explore a different aspect, one that takes a step away from code into a less familiar territory. Although experience suggests codes will always be there somewhere.

---

In an effort to raise funds for This ‘Me’ of Mine, I’ve asked the artists to share a list of books they find informative for their practice.  Follow the links here or visit the Bookshop to see all the books suggested so far.  We hope you will see something inspiring for your own interests.

David’s Reading List:
The Janus Aspect: Artists in the Twenty-first Century by John Tusa

The Infinite Line: Re-making Art After Modernism by Briony Fer

Lines: A Brief History by Tim Ingold

Cryptography (Very Short Introductions) by Fred C. Piper and Sean Murphy

You’ll Never Know: Drawing and Random Interference by Henry Krokatsis, Jeni Walwin and James Flint

The Cloudspotter’s Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds by Gavin Pretor-Pinney

UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language by Martin Fowler and Kendall Scott

Use Your Head: How to Unleash the Power of Your Mind by Tony Buzan

Jane’s Additions:

The Ghost in the Machine by Arthur Koestler

Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty

If you enjoy what you see here, follow the progress of the project by clicking the ‘follow’ button at the bottom of the page and share content you really like using the ‘share this’ buttons below each article.

Leave us a comment too, we would love to talk with you.

If you would like to support the project contact me at ThisMeofMine@gmail.com

THANK YOU!

---

[1] L’île déserte et autres textes (2002). Trans. Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953-1974 (2003). p. 262.