For the final MA show in July I wanted to continue challenging our propensity, as a species, for confrontation and violence but also to assess what I see as a more complicated relationship with violence, inherent within all of us.
We all get angry and confront each other. But I wonder if there is an element, at least in some of us, which is not just repulsed by, but also drawn to, images of violence and suffering - what Joseph Conrad called "the fascination of the abomination" Conrad (2007, p.46). That tension, the discomfort it causes within us, the possibility that at least the second part of that tension - an uncomfortable appetite for violent imagery - is in part what allows us to be at best indifferent to and at worst supportive of, levels of violence elsewhere which would be intolerable in our own communities - that element underpinned at least one of my works (Leontius) in the final MA show.
I also wanted to experiment with different materials and processes - to work in three dimensions with wood and ceramics, to use a laser to burn a caricatured image onto a wooden surface, to weld a simple structure to hold one of my sculptures suspended at head height.
I have worked with both wood and ceramics for many years. Ceramics, in particular, have a fascination for me. Pottery in its many forms represents not just an important part of our very earliest history but reflects, throughout that history, our cultural and artistic progression. The different types of clay and their very different properties, the history and chemical make-up of glazes and the artistic traditions which have evolved through ceramics give that medium, for me, a breadth of artistic opportunity which is exciting.
Working in three dimensions rather than two brings new ways of imagining, seeing and then developing work, very different to painting in two dimensions. Anthony Gormley says: "The reason I chose sculpture as a vocation was to escape words, to communicate in a physical way." Gormley and Gayford (2020, p. 16). I understand very clearly at least the second half of that sentence. There is something about feeling the "body" of a sculpture which is very different to working on the surface of a canvas.
Sketches - graphite on paper (above left), graphite, charcoal and acrylic on paper (above right) (2024) - early thoughts for what became my sculpture Christian Caught by Giant Despair
A few months ago I was producing work inspired by John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. The allegorical structure appealed to me, as did the concept of a journey, a pilgrimage from, in that case, The City of Destruction to The Celestial City. Stepping to one side of the overtly religious imagery, much of the narrative is simply a tale of mores and morality, of personal choice, strength or weakness of character, bravery or cowardice in the face of decisions which are as relevant today as they were in 1678, when the work was published.
I started the sculpture of Christian, the main protagonist in the book, caught by Giant Despair, because that image too felt both powerful and immediately relevant - a general sense of fairly overwhelming despair at the never-ending conflict around us.
When I began that work (the first sketch I did was on 21 October 2023), the current crisis in the Middle East had only just begun, two weeks earlier. The work initially therefore reflected feelings about Ukraine, and a sense that once again there was a war in Europe, started less than a century since the end of the last world war.
But now, alongside what is continuing to unfold in Ukraine, the current fighting in the Middle East again feels like a very long-standing and intractable problem that flares into extreme violence to which there seems no end and no obvious solution.
Bunyan was imprisoned for over 12 years for his religious beliefs - he was a Dissenter, someone who refused to conform to the accepted practices of the liturgy of the Church of England, and that too must have felt never-ending at times. Giant Despair will have been very real for him.
Christian escapes Doubting Castle, in which he has been imprisoned by Giant Despair, but for the time being my sculpture simply shows Christian gripped by the throat, and unable to get away.
Baselitz, G (2011) Sing, Sang, Zero Cedar and oil paint
336.5 x 194.5 x 129 cm
There is something very appealing to me about the wooden sculptures of Georg Baselitz. They are big, and were made with a chain saw. The chain saw marks aren't hidden. They form part of the works and in some cases give those works a texture that they wouldn't otherwise have. The works, despite their angled, almost unfinished appearance, are full of life. Most of them aren't painted, but some have tiny amounts of colour added to them. I like the restraint he exercised, stopping there. This work was made of cedar wood, the same material I used in my work Diplomats II
Above left: the yew log in its original state, and from which my sculpture Christian Caught by Giant Despair was cut
Above right: the final work - Christian Caught by Giant Despair - in the final MA Show at Camberwell in July 2024
Four slides showing the evolution of this sculpture over a number of months. I wanted to add ceramic eyes and teeth - for three reasons. That addition follows a tradition in early art in a number of African and Pacific nations (and perhaps others) of using cowrie shells or coloured stones to add a vibrant and very lifelike element to an otherwise flat wooden work (see below right). I like ceramics, and particularly porcelain, and mixing the two media appealed to me. In the original charcoal sketch above I added acrylic white teeth and that, for me, worked well in that image, so I repeated it within the sculpture. I wanted Giant Despair's teeth and eyes to be particularly prominent.
_edited.jpg)
Above left: Giant Despair's porcelain eyes and teeth having just been bisque fired at 1060 degrees Celsius
Above right: Iatmul Ancestral Skull, East Province, Papua New Guinea, early 20th century Human skull, clay, pigment, cowrie shells, human hair - 21.6 x 19.1 x 23.5 cm
Brooklyn Museum, New York
_edited.jpg)
Above left: the original sketch for this picture from my sketch book Graphite on paper 14 x 30 cm
Above right: the final picture - Leontius Oil on canvas 120 x120 cm - at the final MA Show at Camberwell in July
Above is a sequence showing the evolution of my Leontius picture from early charcoal sketches to the work as it was shown in the final MA show.
I sit on the Steering Committee for the Research Festival and we have chosen to call that Festival "Unresolve". I was very keen on that name. I thought for a long period of time that the works I produced were either resolved (in my mind "finished" in the sense that I had made a decision not to change them) or unresolved. I did not consider firstly that I might view every work I have made with the benefit of hindsight and a new eye, and secondly that the perspective of other people, on my work, might be said to change that work in some way.
The slide show here tells me not only that this work isn't resolved, but that the images I have kept of it allow me to "unresolve" it - in the sense of looking anew at it at an earlier stage of its creative process. I will confess that some of the earlier sketches have, for me, more movement, more dynamism and more excitement that the more finished work.
The prosthetic limb on the right of the picture was an acknowledgement of, and drawn from sights seen on, a recent trip to Lviv in Ukraine, to visit a medical facility creating those limbs for people wounded in the fighting in that country.
A series of graphite sketches from my sketch book, trying to establish a structure for the Leontius picture, and the form and balance of the figure of Leontius himself. He has walked up the hill from the port of "Peiraeus" in Athens and has been drawn to the site of a public execution. He is fighting turmoil within himself. He wants to look at the bodies of those executed, knows he shouldn't, loses that internal battle, forces his eyes wide, invites them to feast their gaze on the sight and curses them for doing so. I sought to capture that expression on his face and I found that difficult. I'm not convinced that the final picture does that any better, perhaps, than the very first sketch in the sequence above. Is being dissatisfied with a final work part of "unresolving" it? I think so.
Dix, O Fleeing wounded man (Battle of the Somme 1916) (1924) Griffiths, A et al
(1998, p.67)
Dix, O Wounded (Autumn 1916, Bapaume)(1924) Griffiths, A et al (1998, p. 62)
I collect images which I think might be helpful in later work. Looking for inspiration for Leontius' cursed gaze I went back to Otto Dix' First World War series of etchings and looked again at the two haunting images above. There is no pleasure in these eyes. Only a sense of horror. But they perhaps struck a chord with me as one half of the horror/pleasure turmoil within Leontius as he looked on the bodies of those executed .
Above left: a preliminary sketch for what became my oil painting - Diplomats I (above right).
I am very sensitive to the cultural references in these images. The fighting in the Middle East has escalated to a horrifying level since I made the first sketch above and the confrontation I have depicted is, and is clearly acknowledged as, a confrontation which has at its root differences between two communities divided by race, nationality, religion and politics. I ask myself, as an artist, to what extent I have the right to represent, in a work such as this, at least one and perhaps two of those elements. My sensitivity is perhaps around the manner in which I have chosen to portray the figures - cartoon-like and almost close to caricature. That is a feature of my artistic style more generally, but I nevertheless ask myself whether or not I have overstepped a culturally sensitive boundary with this work, and with my subsequent work Diplomats II.
Above right: a very early sketch (in graphite on paper) of what was to be a ceramic sculpture, in sections, of individuals in a state of close confrontation, and which became my wooden sculpture Diplomats II. The sketch was inspired by Constantin Brancusi's The Kiss (above left), a work I have always admired.
Brancusi, C The Kiss (1916)
Limestone 58.4 x 37.7 x 25.4 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The above sequence shows two subsequent but nevertheless preliminary sketches in graphite on paper, from my sketch book, which then evolved into the two subsequent charcoal drawings (the first intended to reflect cartoon-like images, the second incorporating significant shading to give a darkness to the final images) - both charcoal drawings designed to fit a piece of cedar wood I had been given, cut into two parts. I manipulated the drawings to align with the natural shape of the wood.
I have always liked Assyrian bas relief work - there is quite a lot of it in the British Museum and the palm trees in some of my earlier work are taken from those reliefs. I was struck in particular by the beautifully carved left foot with its long toes, manicured toe nails and tiny wrinkles above the big toe nail. I have incorporated a less elegant version of that foot, the original of which tapers down in a careful slope, in this work of mine.
Above right: Figure of Nimrud Alabaster bas reflief, Assyria (present day Iraq) c.884-859 BC
Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon.
Above left: Detail from Figure of Nimrud
The cedar wood block I was given was heavy and well seasoned. It has a strong resinous smell to it, and for me a biblical feel, the "Cedars of Lebanon" (I remember from my school days) reputedly being used to build the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. This sequence shows an early stage in the splitting, planing and sanding of what became two blocks, and the careful cutting of the blocks to match the charcoal drawings of the two figures. It was important that the drawings matched the blocks precisely. The laser which burnt the final images into the wood was programmed with the exact size and shape of the drawings and I wanted the laser images also then to match the blocks exactly, so that no element of either drawing was lost but equally so that no bare, unlasered wood was left beyond the edges of the images of the figures. I cut the blocks so that there is a very thin (5mm) gap between them, visible only if you stand at 90 degrees to the finished work.
.jpeg)
As I have said, the two cedar blocks are heavy. I wanted them to sit on relatively thin steel poles so that the heads of the figures were at viewer head height and the work almost floating in mid air. Each block was originally to be held up by a single pole, and that pole need to be in the centre of gravity of the block. I used a very small wooden peg, moved around the base of the block, to find that centre of gravity, and that allowed me to drill the hole for the steel support pole in precisely the right place.
The video above shows the large Camberwell laser burning my charcoal sketches into the two cedar blocks. The laser needs a precise point of focus at a precise distance from the end of the laser arm. I tried various distances and various laser output strengths to achieve a depth of burn which would give enough definition to the images without destroying too much wood. The setting up of the blocks, ensuring that they were precisely level (to maintain a consistent distance from laser to wood), took time.
The plasma cutter at Camberwell cutting the steel plate, 5mm thick, on which the blocks of my sculpture sit, and doing that in less than a minute.
The steel plate was necessary because, disappointingly, the blocks were so heavy that the thin steel poles on which I had placed them weren't strong enough to keep them in place. I was happy with a little bit of flex in the structure but I found that once the blocks started swaying it was difficult to stop that movement. I didn't want much thicker poles, and the plate, welded to those poles and sitting immediately under the cedar blocks, stopped the swaying and was not immediately noticeable.
Three photographs, the first showing the cedar blocks immediately after the images had been burnt into them; the second showing the very beautiful and unusual grain of the wood, reflecting forces and growth patterns as a record of the tree's history, locking in ridges and swirling patterns similar to the lined contours in an Ordnance Survey map. (I have left the wood at either end of the sculpture in its uncovered state, but polished with a clear wax to emphasise the growth ring contours); and finally the finished work, on its steel stand, in the woodwork shop where much of it was made.
The first sketches for what was intended to be a ceramic bust of Mr Putin (and which became my sculpture Mr P), to which viewers would be invited to add one of a series of woolly hats, the aim being to test the appetite of viewers to mock a powerful and controversial international figure, arguably responsible for one of the current major conflicts in the World. I am again very sensitive to the cultural significance of at least one of the hats and have abandoned that particular idea. I included it because ethnic vocabulary, in one shape or form, has been a prominent part of that particular conflict and I wanted to confront that vocabulary in a very provocative way. I have lost my nerve; or rather perhaps I wish simply to respect the sensitivities of others who would not appreciate, or simply reject, the reasons behind that particular choice of hat in this work.
I wasn't satisfied with the drawing of Mr Putin. I didn't want the bust to be lifelike. I wanted a caricature, a cartoon figure who nevertheless resembled Mr Putin. As the work has progressed I have moved away from achieving a likeness. For that reason I have given the final work (simply Mr P) a very marginally less obvious title.
Early sketches, graphite on paper, for a possible sculpture which eventually became my final work Mr P, based on small marble sculptures, made between 2600 - 2400 BCE, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
Above left: Early version of a maquette in raku clay based on the two graphite sketches above, the simplified facial features for which was in turn taken from a portrait of Mr Putin (above right) which I painted two years ago
Small semi- porcelain maquette, based loosely on the cartoon below left
7 x 9 x 10 cm
Above left: A caricature of Mr Putin by a cartoonist I admire - Morten Morland - from the front cover of Spectator Magazine early in 2024
Above right: My charcoal sketches, on paper, attempting to turn Morten Morland's cartoon into a three dimensional work.
A futher maquette, this time based on the sketches above, again in raku clay - 20 x 12 x 18 cm
Working in three dimensions, sculpting a figure (as opposed to making a uniform ceramic piece) required for me a very different exercise in imagination. Visualising a solid figure involves feeling its three dimensional form. In part, something similar applies with the painting of a portrait, rendering a three dimensional subject in two dimensions. But, perhaps obviously, when you make a figure in clay it has to be capable of being viewed from every perspective, and you suddenly realise that there is something lacking in the two dimensional image. There is a different "completeness" to sculpture to that of a painting.
A much larger work, in raku clay, the early stages of what became my sculpture Mr P. Above left: leather hard and so not yet dry. Above right, bisque fired but unglazed. It is this work which will hold the woolly hats, wigs and other headpieces, selected by those looking at it, which are intended to form part of the final work.
The two small maquettes, now glazed, (as glaze tests for the larger work above) but unsuccessfully. The colour is not what I was looking for and very different on the darker raku clay on the figure on the right. The pink is too strong. I had, as a backup, prepared some raku clay glaze test tiles (see below) and will make sure I find the right colour before glazing the main bust.
Four raku glaze test tiles, at different stages of glazing. On the left the tiles have had two coats of white and pink glaze sprayed on with a spray gun. At the stage in the middle I had added different coloured underglazes to be used for some of the features on the bust (including the figure's eyes); and at the stage on the right the tiles have been dipped in a clear transparent stoneware glaze to give a sheen to the finished pieces. All will be fired at 1260 degrees C.
I considered, very early in the MA course, creating an animation in which a man becomes angry at a perceived slight and fires himself from a large gun, blowing up both himself and the person who slighted him. That idea came from a visit to the Imperial War Museum. I had gone there to look at the work of David Cotterrell in the Blavatnik Galleries and was struck by the huge naval guns in front of the building. I was reminded of a scene in a television program in which a father, who has taken his children on a visit to the battleship HMS Belfast, imagines firing one of its guns and wondering where the shell would land. I wondered the same thing in relation to the Imperial War Museum guns, and imagined an angry person simply deciding on that trajectory and acting on it.
The concept evolved beyond simply an animation and I decided to make a ceramic bust of the main figure, hence the work above. I drew inspiration from a ceramic figure of a red-headed girl with her forearm and fist vertical in front of her, her middle finger raised in insult. Her forearm had a woollen sleeve on it and the amalgamation of a realistic ceramic image with a woollen bit of clothing made me decide, first, to create my ceramic bust with a woollen hat on it and, second, to use that image as an early part of the animation narrative about anger, leading to a ludicrously disproportionate and violent response, the anger caused quite simply by someone else buying the same woollen hat as my protagonist.
In making the animation below, working from the three dimensional ceramic pieces, the creative process was again transformed in a way which should perhaps have been obvious to me but wasn't, initially. The animation, although constructed of two dimensional drawings, involves the same requirement to think in three dimensions as did the ceramic piece, because in my short film the figures turn, presenting new perspectives as they do so. And as William Kentridge has pointed out when making his own animated films, the work runs over time - the animation operating therefore in four dimensions rather than three.
A small graphite sketch on paper from my sketch book - one of many - which I chose for the figure in my animation and which also formed the basis for the ceramic works.
A short preliminary trial for my animation, using the Stop Motion App. I wanted to test a number of things, including the number of "frames" I needed to create to achieve a reasonable degree of smoothness in the film. I have chosen to create individual drawings for each frame. That was a conscious decision. I admire William Kentridge's approach, which involves re-working a single, charcoal image by rubbing out elements of one drawing, allowing him to amend that drawing in a limited respect to recreate, quickly, the next frame of the animation. He says that he likes the fact that each drawing has within it the ghost of previous drawings, and that the smudged charcoal is evidence of the drawing's (and so the animation's) history.
I wanted a cleaner "picture", with simple, cartoon lines allowing me to pick out, with greater clarity, the narrative features which were important to me. The price of that was a much greater required investment of time, and for that reason I simplified the drawings as much as I felt I could.
The work is progressing, but unfinished.
A second stage of my animation which, in narrative terms, will precede the section above. It requires considerable editing and I am intending to colour the woolly hat. That will be the only bit of colour in the film and it will be red, with yellow spots.
Above left: the glaze tests, fired at a stoneware temperature of 1260 degrees C, and showing softer, pink or apricot colouring much closer to what I was looking for.
Above right: the bust, in the spray-glazing booth, sprayed with a layer of white underglaze, a thin coat of coral pink underglaze and then covered with quite a thick coat of transparent stoneware glaze, designed to give the work a glassy sheen.
The final work, glazed and fired at 1260 degrees C - Mr P - 44x 28 x 30 cm
References
Conrad, J. (2007) Heart of Darkness. Edited by P. Armstrong. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Gormley, A. and Gayford, M (2020). Shaping the World. London: Thames & Hudson.
Griffiths, A et al (1998) Disasters of War Callot Goya Dix. London: National Touring Exhibitions, Hayward Gallery and Arts Council Collection publications.
Kentridge, W – ‘Art Must Defend the Uncertain’ | Artist Interview | TateShots:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnweo-LQZLU&t=16s
Plato, 1935. The Republic. Translated by D. Lee. London: J.M. Dent.
Bibliography
Baselitz, G. (2015) Georg Baselitz: Sculptures 2011-2015. London: Serpentine Galleries
Bunyan, J. (2008) The Pilgrim's Progress. Edited by W.R. Owens. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Sontag, S. (2004) Regarding the Pain of Others. London: Penguin.