Contexts Units 1 & 2
Unit 1
Simon Callery - Painter's Forum 10.10.23
Simon is not a figurative artist. Although he started as a sculptor and became a painter, his current practice is cross-disciplinary, melding archaeology with painting, but working with natural pigments, washed canvases and other cloths. It is not therefore easy to see the reference contexts for my own work.
But Simon showed us some of his earlier pictures and I made quick sketches of those (See opposite).The two which struck me, repeated here, consisted of faint oil pastel lines on a lead white ground. The paintings had a calm earthiness about them.
The first painting consisted of horizontal lines, the second of vertical lines. The paintings were otherwise similar in colour, texture and feel. But the difference between the two, caused exclusively by the shift in line from horizontal to vertical, was striking.
The "horizontal" picture carried with it a clear sense of perspective, of landscape and (perhaps not surprisingly, given the linear direction) of a horizon. The "vertical' picture carried no such sense and my scribbled note says that the "vertical lines removed the impression of depth."
As an artist focused on recognisable images I find that interesting. Is it simply that our eye is much more attuned to horizontal lines - flat surfaces with horizontal edges receding to a horizontal horizon, and that multiple vertical lines are much less evident in our environment, and therefore carry much less referential significance for us?
I am reminded strongly of Bridget Riley's op art vertical line series. I don't recall many, if any, horizontal line images produced by her and I wonder, after Simon's talk, whether that was a deliberate part of her determination to escape from any hint of the figurative in her work.
Perhaps therefore the context, for me, lies simply in the significance of, and the impact made on me by, the horizontal work and its juxtaposition with a work (the vertical) which is more alien to my practice.
Catherine Anyango Grünweld Talk given on 1.11.23
Catherine's practice involves organising information, reframing histories, the use of materials and "undoing" rather than "doing". She talked about "invisible story-telling" adding an extra layer to her work. At least three of these things resonated with me, in part because they reflect elements of my own practice.
Her work has a strong political element to it and she confronts difficult topics.But the part of her talk which interested me most was her re-rendering of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a novel I know, or thought I knew, well. She has re-created the novel as a graphic work, re-focusing the narrative to give greater prominence to the Africans who feature in Conrad's original, but as marginalised and almost alien characters.
I have since re-read the novel and have found the new perspective, which her talk gave me, disturbing. We live in a time in which many histories are, quite rightly, being re-examined and re-framed. For a number of us that process is uncomfortable. I was born and brought up in Malaysia, a former British colony but which which still retained, throughout my childhood, much of its colonial infrastructure.
Re-reading The Heart of Darkness with the benefit of Catherine's new vision has had a profound impact for me, reflecting not so much a re-interpretation of the novel itself but rather a change in me, and my perspective when reading it. Her talk has reminded me not only that we can be unconscious of in-built perspectives when viewing work but that we have an ongoing obligation to question and if necessary amend those perspectives.
Her graphite drawings are haunting images. In that respect they capture much of the atmosphere of the novel, but with her very different compassionate focus. Much of her wider practice employs graphite as a medium, very heavily worked. Her website says that "The process and labour invested in the work is a direct homage to the subjects". I understand that and can see it in the drawings.
In my own work I too try to organise information; if not to "re-frame histories" then perhaps to "re-use" them to target a new purpose. And I like the idea of invisible story telling - something perhaps a bit enigmatic lying behind an image which, on its face, appears at first straightforward.
These for me are the primary contexts I draw from Catherine's work.
David Cotterrell's talk on Empathy and Risk - and discussions I had with him in his studio
An image from Gateway II, David's work in the Blavatnik Galleries at the Imperial War Museum
A sketch from my notebook of a photograph taken by David, illustrating graphically the "restriction of his peripheral vision"
David spent time in Afghanistan, commissioned by a well-known charity and supported by the Imperial War Museum. The product of his commission is now in the Blavatnik Galleries of the Imperial War Museum - three large photographs of wounded troops being evacuated in transport planes.
An important feature of David’s visit, to a war zone, was the risk assessment undertaken before and during his time there, the constraints placed on him (and on others with a duty to look after him) as a result of that assessment, and the effect of those constraints on his ability to engage, and empathise with, the peoples who lived beyond the confines of the military premises in which David found himself.
In short, his vision, his “peripheral vision”, was frequently physically constrained by the concrete, armoured or camouflaged protections around him (see sketch to the right). That in turn had, he found, a disturbing and limiting impact on his ability to engage emotionally (and empathetically) with, in particular, the Afghan civilian population living outside his imposed field of vision. He drew therefore an interesting and profound connection between risk and empathy – intensely relevant to a war zone, the constrained manner in which wars are conducted, and the corresponding challenges of reaching a peaceful end to fighting once risk-required barriers have been erected.
I discussed artistic agency with David – the right of any artist to engage with a topic (such as a current but remote war) within an artistic framework. I am looking, as part of my own practice, both at the concept of agency but also at the barriers or limitations which come with it. David’s thoughts on risk, the constraints not only on agency but on an artist’s ability to engage empathetically with those living in the wider conflict zone, has given me a interesting insight into an extended and evolved thought process deeply relevant to what currently concerns me as an artist.
Unit 2
Mark Fairnington. - Discussion Group 9.5.24
Mark Dion: The Life of a Dead Tree - Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto May 23 - July 30, 2019 (Source: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery)
We discussed amongst other things Mark Dion's art work, or perhaps art project - The Life of a Dead Tree.
I was interested in two aspects of that project - first, the very heavy scientific content of the work and, by extension, the relationship between art and science within it and, second, as a result, the limit, if there is one, to what art brings to a project such as that - ie what distinguishes the artistic contribution from the scientific contribution to the project.
I am not concerned with whether or not that distinction matters (at least in relation to this particular project). The boundaries of what constitutes art have been pushed almost to the point at which that question has become moot; (although this work did make me wonder whether the only "boundary" to what is art, at least in linguistic terms, might be the boundary created by another more dominant discipline in an art work. If a project is more science than art, is it less art than science?)
But the topic interests me because of its relevance to my own practice, to art concerned with war or the politics of war. At what point does art, treating of that subject, become a political act in its own right - and as such does it cease, in any respect, to be art.
Mark Dion's project involved cutting up a huge, dead ash tree, bringing it into a gallery space and presenting it as an art work alongside scientific analysis of what had caused it to die.
Scientists could of course have done exactly that. But in our discussion we concluded that they would not have done so. The science (the study of the beetle which had killed the tree and the analysis of the tree's decomposition over time) could have been done more easily and more cheaply without bringing the whole tree into a gallery.
The artistic contribution was, in some respects, the "unnecessary" (in scientific terms) element of the project - the imaginative sweep which science, at least for the purposes of empiric study, didn't require.
In the introduction to Art and Politics Now (2014, p10), Anthony Downey writes:
"Contemporary art, this book will propose, imagines that which remains politically unimaginable."
Mark Dion was transforming what might have been a scientific project into an art project by bringing imagination to the work, by calling it art, by putting it into a gallery and by inviting an artist's audience to see it and engage with it.
I see that as interesting in relation to my own work, which treads the now fuzzy line between art and politics.
Mona Hatoum's work Natura morta (medical cabinet) 2012 in the Pallant House Gallery's Exhibition The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain 11 May - 20 October 2024
To what extent is an art work ever “finished”? I don’t mean when is the artist finally satisfied that he or she has no more to do, and that the work has now achieved the artist's artistic objective. I refer to work which was made with inherent ambiguity, or indeed without any obvious meaning at all – art which invites a contribution of understanding or participation from the viewer and which might, within that interaction, change both the viewer and the work itself. “As people we are changed by what we see, and the things we see change too.” Bradley (2019).
We are “confronted daily by horrible things...and are dulled by them,” Beryl Cook (no date) in a conversation reported by Julian Spalding - Spectator (May 2024). Mona Hatoum’s solution to that problem is to present us with the inexplicable or unexpected - objects, spaces or material which is at once familiar but incongruous, out of place or transported in scale.
“I like my work to raise questions, rather than supply answers…” Hatoum, reported by Bradley (2019)
“With the viewer assuming responsibility for the meaning of the work, the work itself remains mutable, even unfinished:..” Bradley (2019).
Her work Natura morta (medical cabinet) – carries with it an inherent set of contradictions. The objects are beautiful, blown glass from Murano in Venetian glass colours, lustrous and fragile. They look like scent bottles, but on closer inspection are in the shape of hand grenades, their apparent fragility now at odds with their new identity; and the violence and injury they denote at odds with their housing, a medical cabinet. The play on words "natura morta" – a more apt description than "still life".
What has the artist brought to this, a silent political statement or offering? She has brought an invitation to those viewing the work to question it, to assume responsibility for interpreting it and thereby to change both it and themselves.
…..”her work implicates us quietly yet insistently in that:
“it will enter you if you stand there
And spend the rest of its time inside you
Asking whatitwas whatitwas whatitwas
In a vivid hiss heard only by your bones” - Jay Bernard 'Hiss", Surge, quoted by Bradley (2019)
Reference:
Bradley, Dr F (2019) Essay in the Catalogue for the exhibition: Mona Hatoum Remains to be Seen - White Cube Bermondsey 12 September – 3 November 2019
Jacques Callot Plate 10 The Stappado from his Large Miseries of War series (1633)
Callot produced 18 plates in this series, but it is this one which I find most upsetting. There is something about torture, the deliberate infliction of pain by one human being on another, which is particularly revolting.
The series was first printed in 1633 and "struck a chord across Europe. This can be demonstrated by the great number of impressions that were printed...right through to the nineteenth century." Griffiths (1998, p.18)
Many of the plates take similar form to this one - one or more brutal acts in a landscape or, as here, a town, with many figures depicted. The plates are small (about 83mm x 180mm), and so it is not always easy to establish precisely what is happening in the scene. But in this image two things are immediately clear. A solitary figure has been suspended from an engine (drawn so carefully that you can see precisely how it works), and a huge crowd looks on or in some instances looks elsewhere in disinterest.
The history of images of war forms a substantial part of my research. I have considered, elsewhere, the depressing evidence that those images have had little or no effect on our propensity for violence, but this image carries with it a particular resonance and weight. If you search online for the term 'strappado', the engine of the title of the plate, you find immediately a reference to the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi in Abu Ghraib prison, whilst under US custody, on 4 November 2003. He ""died while he was suspended by his wrists, his hands cuffed behind his back...." en.m.wikipedia.org. We have learnt nothing, it seems, other than how to repeat, precisely, the barbarity of our forbears.
But the plate is not just another example of what Robert Burn's called "man's [never-ending] inhumanity to man"; it also captures both the ghoulish prurience of spectators of brutality and, for at least some members of the audience in this image, of the waning of that prurience into indifference.
Sontag deals with both in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003). On the second of the two, referring to our current potential for indifference, she says: "in a world saturated, no, hyper-saturated with images, those that should matter have a diminishing effect: we become callous" Sontag (2003, p.92). On the first, she quotes Socrates' description, from Plato's The Republic, Book IV , of Leontes who, "seeing the bodies of some criminals lying on the ground, with the executioner standing by them...wanted to go and look at them, but at the same time was disgusted...[and] at last [when] the desire was too much for him [opened] his eyes wide...and cried [to his eyes] 'There you are, curse you, feast yourselves on this lovely sight.' "
We have not only a seemingly unquenchable capacity for violence, but also "a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others" Sontag again, quoting Edmund Burke from A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757).
Griffiths says of Callot's Large Miseries of War : "No series of such a subject had ever been seen in art before, neither in printmaking nor painting." He wonders why Callot chose to make the series and explains that he was caught in the chaos and brutality of the Thirty Years War which engulfed his home town of Nancy in Lorraine. If his series was an artist's attempt to draw attention to the miseries and misfortunes he depicted, and by doing so try to bring an end to them, he would be particularly distressed by the echo, centuries later, of recent and chillingly similar examples of the horrors he depicted.
References:
National Touring Exhibitions (1998) Disasters of War Callot Goya Dix
Sontag, S (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others. Penguin Random House UK