unfolding coded languages
decommissioning signs
carefully ravelling mysteries
glued with PVA
tied off with rhetoric
making marks
that cannot be understood
in any conceivable future
knowing not doing
doing not knowing
being not doing
doing not being
in a world
that values only answers
I live
in my world of
unanswerable questions
feeding little
ticking time-bombs
into the streams
of history
and progress
determined
to blow a multi-coloured
hole in them
interrupt
their never-ending evil
if only
for a moment
I wrote this in September 2016.
It was an attempt to describe my process and purpose as an artist.
I am frequently confused and stressed about what I "should" be doing, what I am "supposed to do" - it's just one of the many manifestations of that old shape-shifter, Procrastinos the god of prevarication.
It whispers:
"If you are unsure what you are doing, it's safer to do nothing, just in case..."
"You need to be sure you are doing the right thing otherwise you will fail, people will misunderstand or hate you. If that happens you might DIE..."
"Once you work out what you should be doing it'll all magically happen, so best work that out first, then you can make the work..."
If I listen to those kinds of injunctions I make very little work, or none at all - the work I do end up making I hide from the world or apologise for.
My studio statement was an attempt to both defy Procrastinos and define the anti-logic of my work. Whilst you can rationalise my creative work after the fact, it does not come from rationalising. It comes out and I shape it as it goes. I start from abstraction, from drawing, mark-making and follow the process until I am happy with the way it looks and feels. Meaning emerges from the process and the finished piece but is not exclusive or fixed. My work is questioning, not giving definitive answers. Ambiguity is something I actively look for and embrace.
Rationality and reason have ruined the world, I prefer the fluidity of poetry and art.
Which begs the question: why did I need to write the statement?
