Saturday 5 September 2020

I am for an art that loves everybody

Over the last few weeks I have been reflecting on my practice. Looking back to the blog post from 2014 entitled 'Searching for the grit' I realise that this examination is a cyclical process. Here I am again, trying to work out why I make art, who it is for, and what I want to say. I came across a poor quality photo of this acrostic manifesto I made in my first year on the BA Fine Art course at Winchester, in which I grappled with the same questions. With a big nod to Claes Oldenburg's 'Ode to Possibilities' (1961), I came up with this:
Despite the manifesto's brevity and apparent naivety, it covers all the bases. Looking back, it pretty-well characterises my work for the last nine years. The March (and prints) for Optimism and the psychogeographic walking practice, are all seeded in this manifesto. The attention to birds and words, the generosity of freely-distributed woodcuts and zines - these are all in line with the sentiments I articulated back in 2011. I want my work to 'make a difference' - a little contribution to changing the world, maybe one person at a time. I shared this old photo on Instagram, explaining I was revisiting the basis of my practice. A good friend from my studio said 'hang on to those'. I mean to. 


But it's all well and good stopping for a chat when I buy the Big Issue. Isn't it more urgent to address the societal conditions that enable homelessness and poverty to persist, both here in the UK and beyond, which look set to worsen over the coming years? Well yes, and that's covered by the manifesto too. I have long been convinced that all artwork is political, because being an artist is to take a political position. It stakes a claim on our time and resources and puts them to use for a mainly non-commercial end. Artists are either complicit with the current systems of power and distribution of resources, both within the art-world and the 'real' world, globally and locally, or they are agitating for change. As we are learning from the Black Lives Matter movement, silence is violence. 



The status quo is not working. Society is set up with an unsustainable dependency on growth, which enriches a tiny number while oppressing and exploiting huge numbers of people and trashing, negligently, the biosphere that keeps us all alive. Inequalities of wealth and opportunity, corruption and greed blight our societies. Fear and hatred of 'the other' are manipulated by power-seeking people to keep the population feeling divided and powerless. In my experience of the UK, we are a more divided society now than ever before in my lifetime. I take a position against ignorance, against exploitation, and for the human. I don't subscribe to misanthropic, malthusian tropes about humans being the virus infecting the planet. I believe a better, fairer, sustainable world is possible, that the global population of humans is stabilising, and that there are sufficient resources for everyone if we use them fairly. Life is a constant shifting of the balance between species and habitats and nothing we do will bring about the global harmony we might imagine, if we're hoping for stasis. Change is one of the constant factors of the natural world. So let my artwork express life and change in all its ridiculous complexity. Let it confront prejudice and abuse of power. Let it present love and generosity, in opposition to fear and mean-spiritedness. Let it appear foolish and mischievous as it punches you, gently, on the nose. Let it dive into the world as a journeying pilgrim, discovering its overlooked corners and bringing you along for the journey. 


If those are the heady reveries of my worldview and values, what are the specific issues I'm grappling with as an artist?  My job as an artist is to create work, and more work, and more work that expresses my values and experience. For me, it starts with drawing and ideas in equal measure. These are necessary ingredients but not outcomes in themselves. I enjoy the hand-made and analogue qualities of woodcut printing, and it's distributive potential. And my time-based, durational walking practice is at the core of what I do. I hope there is a sense of love and generosity embedded in all that I do, even when it involves a provocation or rebuke - but I am seeking the grit that creates the pearl that I can pass on to an audience. I want the work to embody my values in a way that can transport people to a transformational experience. 


I am aware looking back over my work that it has sometimes tended towards the safe and familiar, the birds and the trees, without any of the transformational grit I want to communicate. The poetics and mischief of a performative practice should never feel safe and familiar, it should be unsettling and discombobulating. So I will focus on the work that asks questions and provokes responses. I will avoid the comfort zone of making nice prints of pretty scenes. I will aim to connect my core values into my practice as an authentic expression of myself, including the contrasts of light and dark. For me, that will always involve supporting and promoting the work of other artists, whose work I love and who are on similar journeys. 

Questioning my practice online in this way feels like quite a vulnerable position to take - but that is also part of my job. My practice is a process of constant trial and error working out these issues from different angles, using different media, surprising people with incongruities that may challenge their unexamined beliefs (as well as my own).

Sunday 16 August 2020

Getting back in the saddle

It is impossible to describe what it feels like to lose a child. Alice's illness with a brain tumour was the dominant presence in my life all the way through my journey back to art school and establishing my practice. Her death had been approaching relentlessly for a decade and everything else in our lives happened around the edges of that. All my artworks, including the public artwork March For Optimism, and the ongoing distributive woodcut 'I'm Glad You're Alive!' are all responses to the world that squeezed out round the edges of the fact of Alice's impending death. 

Alice died in the Duchess of Kent Hospice, Reading on 6th June 2019. Over a year later Liz and I, and her brother Joe, carry the loss daily. It is like learning to live in a home with the back-wall blasted away. We are functioning and doing things day to day when they seem possible. I returned to my teaching job at Winchester School of Art last October and in my more lucid moments have probably contributed a little to my students' recent degree successes. I'm immensely proud of all of them.

Artistic output dwindled to a trickle over the last couple of years, as the creative urge has been at a low ebb. But the stuff that squeezes out around the edges has included my book, A Walk For Stanley, published a month after Alice's death and some paintings and drawings which have found appreciative audiences (buyers!)

During the Covid-19 Lockdown all teaching, tutorial and assessment activity was conducted online. I wanted to make something to encourage my students so I created this simple woodcut:


I made an edition of 110, giving them to my students as part of an art exchange and selling the excess for £15 each. I passed all the proceeds to two local charities: Reading Refugee Support Group and Sue Ryder, Duchess of Kent Hospice. Both charities are close to our hearts because Alice volunteered for RRSG and was cared for at DOK for the last six weeks of her life. The sales raised £480 each for the charities. 

Another nationwide response to the Covid-19 crisis was #portraitsfornhsheroes, initiated by portrait painter Thomas Croft. Artists offered free portraits for NHS workers, who were putting their lives on the line daily to tackle the impact of the pandemic. I ended up doing two such portraits. Mine were made as woodcuts and I think the recipients were happy with the results. This one is Kerry, a trainee pharmacist (and Joy Division fan). 



A third lockdown project came in the form of an online auction organised by ArtAgainstCovid in the North West. My friend the artist and curator Kezia Davies was involved in organising this and I was happy to donate a print. It was bought by a collector in New York who did well to get this for the bargain price of £70.






So Lockdown has seen me getting 'back in the saddle', getting back to the studio at OpenHand OpenSpace. I am making new work and developing plans for future projects - watch this space for more news about them soon.