Scale

My work is small, I know that, but is it important? Is it necessary to be small? I became very conscious of it today, returning from Angela De La Cruz’s studio. Monumental work in a tiny space. Mine, tiny work in a tiny space, yet a large room. It’s something I’ve considered before. in the triangle space my work was positively dwarf. Yet is that important? Of the various ceramic humps I have made, the large one has been the most difficult to work with. The least successful. of the various tHings I have tried, the larger scale has just not cut the mustard.

So, is there a different approach. One observer today commented that perhaps mt work is significantly small, hand held, resulting in the viewer becoming monumental. I need to sit with that a while. I like the sound of it, something rings true.

The Indiscipline of Painting

To say this show took my breath away is no understatement. After a long journey, knowing the Bernard Frize talk was cancelled, we arrived and had a coffee to give us some strength. But we didn’t need it. As we walked into the first room, I was hit with ryman’s….. And ….. Two amazing paintings where paint was the hero. Without exception, this show had work that celebrated and honoured the very medium of paint, it’s liquidity, it’s ability to delineate movement, it’s ability to be celebrated for what it is.

To choose a favourite in each area (a silly game I play, making myself explain why…) was SO difficult. The potential and variety of the work and the possibilities each one suggested was awe inspiring. Thankfully I was going around the show with Georgina, which made us both stop and question where the source of interest lie in that which arrested us. Made made some pretty impressive guesses around the creation and nature of some of the works, clarified by Daniel Sturgis later.

The curation of the show was interesting too- from each section, you received glimpses of paintings you had not yet seen, and ones you had been past. The potential conversations between the works were so interesting.

The questions after with Daniel Sturgis proved informative, hearing his reasons for choosing the works, and more details about the ones that puzzled me. My favourite of his answers was in response to a question about the monochrome work. …. He simply said “People say abstract artists have no skill. I disagree. And this is evidence enough.”

The crossing between disciplines of abstract painting was the key idea behind the show, how painting ‘borrows’ from design, popular culture, architecture and the like. For me that had limited interest. The action of paint on surface, the artists presence and action was soul food. To see such variety of approaches and results where the paint was celebrated, both through modernism and in contemporary work was inspiration, to say the least.

Back at the painting seminar, interestingly someone else who had been at the show said “this wasn’t the kind of work you could look at for long. A bit of a one hit wonder”. As I considered her remark with bewilderment, I again realised just how significant this show has been for my work. Materiality all the way!!

Angela De La Cruz studio visit

At the eleventh hour, I received a text, someone had cancelled, so did I want to come.

Breathtaking.

Angela’s studio in my mind would be large, airy, clean and with vast roominess. Instead, two small rooms are where she and her two assistants work. The space may be limited, but the work is certainly not.

In the two rooms we saw ‘Bloated’ an new series of works for an up coming Biennial. What a privilege. The forms take on the bodily proportions of angela, height and breadth, boxed almost coffin like in aluminium, beaten from inside until splitting, almost broken apart. They are made slowly and precisely according to Angela’s exacting instructions, and regularly scrutinised the returned for remaking. She keeps a close eye, watching, scrutinising,checking. Her assistant Will saw no threat in this, just the need for her to create precisely her own work. He described her work as enormously personal, her measurements, her feelings, her transforming since the stroke.

Her work bears weighty titles, such as Bloated, Deflated, Homeless, Scratch, Submerged and Flat. Her subjects are weighty too, often herself, her own ongoing recovery, but also as she talked, she referred to films (Misery), the tsunami, Bill Clinton and bodies of soldiers in Iraq. Her meaning is achieved simply and poetically, with a singularity of intention. Her works stand authoritatively, where the meanings are deeply imbued in the work, but not dominantly controlling them.

When asked, Angela declared all her work painting.

As she described the making of ‘Compressed’ the repeated beating of an aluminium box of exactly Angela’s measurements from above with a fork lift truck. Each work bends and buckles in a unique way, even though they all sustain the same attack, the response is unique, and resulting in luxurious distortions and buckles in its materiality. It is beaten until it reaches the height of Angela in her wheelchair. Beautiful and tragic. Yet she makes clear she does not want pity.

Pity? No, I think the only appropriate response is an enormous dose of respect.

Hockney At the RA

He expressly and clearly declares his love of image making, so Hockney and I were not the best of bed fellows. However, a kind friend bought me a ticket, I had watched the documentary screening at the graduate school (the person being significantly more interesting than the work), so it seemed foolish to snub.

The breadth of the exhibition was pretty vast (would a college lecture have suggested more editing??!) and the colour feast rich. I was most excited in two rooms, the earlier works (including pearl blossom highway) and some interesting works not from observation, but from imagination.

Imagination is where I felt the greatest interest lay. Where Hockney allows his imagination and memory to collide, a more interesting image arrives (according to my own, humble opinion). The trees become blue, and curling into tunnels, the pathways and shadows vibrantly alive, the hawthorn blossom almost alive and squirming. These gave much deeper food for my imagination and sensory awareness, and gave me a fresh view. The observational works gave the fuel for these far more interesting canvases.

The widely reputed iPad drawings disappointed me. Points for embracing technology, the speed of recording impressive, but did they warrant a whole room? Many old ladies commented loudly in the room about the number chosen, and the editing process crossed my mind again. However, their benefit was the resulting joy of coming across paint on canvas again, a welcome material relief from the synthetic and flat iPad print outs.

Finally,I came across the best room of the exhibition- the video work. 9 cameras from fixed viewpoints, an exercise in ‘concentrated looking’. The journey along the roads were interesting, but the scenes inside his studio, with dancers and vibrant colour, again, prompted me to think again, imagine and consider freshly. That’s what I love in art. Something that pushes my mind and e, my memory and imagination.