Between cupid and the crow he floats
He brings messages from a far.
Like some furry little warlord but not furry or warlordish
Unknowingly he is a protagonist, carrying a seed.
Holes are opened up to fall into;
Holes like jacketed water bottles
Holes like warm sticky tar.
He keeps us waiting then opens a window for us
A window through our chest
A window onto some other unseen space
He vanishes, nameless
Having delivered joy and melancholy, as if bedfellows
When words can’t explain but you use them anyway
Vomitting them out in some vain hope to fill that void
Ripping them from your stomach in an attempt to avoid
The chuckling truth that theres nothing you can say.
Becasue its still there but its not there
All hail the plastic king of nowhere!
All hail this plastic king
Who brings us wings; that he made from dead birds
All hail the plastic king
Who promises us things; so we just follow in dull heards
All hail the plastic King
becasue its quite something; to reason to this pointless mess
All hail tthe plastic King
Becasue he will bring an end to this meandering path of nothingness.
Hello,
I’m gonna write up some splurge about my upcoming solo show in St Helens, mainly to help me to organise my thoughts because I’ve got so much on at the minute that I feel slightly like I’m treading water in a vast ocean, and sure as eggs is eggs I cant see any land on which to rest my weary limbs.
First of all the title; which is I am Spartacus is Spartacus. I’m really pleased about this title because it seems to encapsulate a particularly illogical logic. And this also goes for the other shows that I’m trying to sort out with Rich, Kapellmeister pulls a doozy and One can often be thwarted by the Antidisestablishmentarianism. They all remind me in a way of the Two Ronnies linguistic gymnastics and the anarchist surrealism of Monty Python, which in their own way show the limitations of language as a form of communication. My solo show I can see as varying on two levels to the group shows, and this is suggested through the title. First of all there is a sideways glance at the traditions of hero worship- this is very much a stomping ground dominated by the male and I have recently come to realise how masculine my paintings are, and as such, how limited they are. I was worried about this for a while and thought it made me primitive, dumb, one-dimensional but then I simply figured that it is what it is and maybe by accepting this fact it will allow me to become a more rounded person in the future. So I have tried to embrace this side of the work to a certain extent, and through the links to heroism it suggests the affinity the paintings are trying to have with the work of the past, the grand, archetypal myths that speak so eloquently of human nature. The second point to be made about the title is its mirroring aspect. This has come more to the fore over the past few days as I have struggled with how best to use the space for the show, which is a corridor in an office block, with windows on one side and the hanging wall opposite. The space is important precisely because it is such an unusual space to hold a painting show, but this is exactly why I have liked it from the very beginning, it’s somehow perverse to hang paintings there. But I need to try to articulate this very fact by the way that I manipulate the space, making it more into a painting installation rather than a traditional white cube exhibition. I don’t necessarily know what to do here but the idea of paintings being mirrors that slightly distort our experiences of life then throw this alternate world back at us, has been sitting in my mind for a while, and the title of the show echoes this quite nicely. An idea which is forming is to, when the paintings are hung, draw on the windows opposite with impermanent marker, echoing certain facets of the painting that directly opposes them, and incorporate these characters into the world outside the window, so in essence it’s all meshing together and a new type of lyricism is beginning to form. The problem with this is that I have to work in front of people, so it becomes almost like an intervention/live-art piece and I have to have utter confidence in my own abilities to make it work, and make it work in a relatively short period of time. I don’t know whether I can do this. But then I can’t think of any other options. Other than that its all under control.
I met a young lad about a year ago at a career day I was speaking at in Cambridge. He had a kind of modest passion and desire to enquire which struck me. He has sent me a few emails since which show a keeness to get to come to terms with the nature of contemporary art practise. I thought this most recent one was an interesting response to a Banksy article I read by Matthew Collins the other day on the Guardian website.
… Hi Tom,
I think that the work of Banksy may not be a masterpiece in craftmanship, but it should be more than just a joke. I am not a big fan of his stuff, but i do enjoy them. The main reason is tht they surprise me very much, esp those on the wall between Palestine and Israel. such as http://photos23.flickr.com
These two images bring hopes, expose how unnecessary that wall is. It also quite successfully trivialises this kind of political game and tell the common people to look at that wall with humour but not relate it with hatred. They are suggested to resist from being manipulated by their governments for the governments’ own benefits.
(I rmb reading an article by you saying that art and politics should be 2 things, hahah, am i treading on your toes?)
However, i dun see the point of framing his work and sell them. This kind of mentality is very imperialistic i guess. Just like how they used to frame anything exotic in a frame in the past, making the thing losing its original aesthetics and power. eg, look at some porcelains in Fitzwilliam. It’s really indulgent to line a perfect vase with gold handles and other patterns. The beauty of that semi-translucent porcelain is on the creamy light diffusing from the porcelain, by putting extra things on it is like putting a piece of lace on a painting. Similarly, I think Banksy’s work must stay in its original context and its meant to be ephemeral.
” in awe of wit, learning, craft, knowledge and surprise; we’re amazed that the depths of what it feels like to be a suffering, feeling, joyful, thinking human being right now can be captured by art.” Art can also be spontaneity, energy and courage to speak.” If Banksy’s things are to blame for being craftless and emotionally shallow, then i think Warhol and Duchamp’s stuff should be the first to blame.
Please tell me how you feel about that article and how you think about Banksy’s work.
Ricky
Jacob Polley really does write the most beautiful of poems. A contemporary poet whose verses seem imbued with a kind of timeless quality, as if they have been around as long as we have known. Simple, effective, evocative and able to imbue the humble with a sense of the sacred and profound. He brings a light and importance onto the small things.
JACOB POLLEY
A Jar of Honey
a pound of light,
and swivel the stunned glow
around the fat glass sides:
but for the floating knuckle
of honeycomb
attesting to the nature of the struggle
You pull a piece of sticky paint over a white base, it glows. You sit down a colour and a whole composition finds a certain balance. You sand back a layer of paint and suddenly it all just works. You wander back three paces, bleary eyed and tired and it presents itself too you with a sense of rightness. Anyone who has picked up a brush has felt this. A moment of euphoria when the subjective self seems to believe it has struck open a moment of real quality; genuine visual clairty. Normally we go to bed, rest our eyes and wake with a clearer and more object mindset. It is normally then that we realise our folly and see the glib insignificance of our practise. Occasionally a piece still surprises us and still tries to tell us it is more than more pretentious blank gestures.
I had been feeling tihs about a piece I finished recently, ‘between somewhere and nowhere five’. I started to believe that it had a kind of absolute quality which I was proud of. I am not claiming that I thought it anything truly good, but that in the relative sphere of my creative practise it flet like a real step forwaards in the march towards some unknown imaginary goal towards wish we blindly reach.
I still kind of feel this. But then you go and re-look at the work of an artist like Matthias Weischer. I pick him out quite conscioulsy. For this is not someone who has yet gone down in history, this is noa a canonical artist to whom we could never even dream of reaching. This is, however, a contemporary painter of the very highest order. It is the kind of level to which we should at the very least be believeing we can achieve. Its a kind of realitic but still vast ambition.
I am aware of the unfashionabhle nature of such talk. With a world in which absolute values no longer exist how can we put someone on such a pedastal to be aimed at. Is everything not realtive? Well yes, it is. But there is a certain undescribale quality and rightness about somebodies work which we might aspire to. Even if we are also aspiring towards the production of an entirely different aesthetic with a different set of values. The fact is that within the nuances of our various practises lies conintuous truths about painting, which can’t always be articulated, which do enable use, trough judgement, to at least half belive in a hierachy. If we don’t then whats the fucking point?
Anyway, back to my main point. At no point did I think I was anywhere near Weischer with my current practise. I am many things and have many faults but I believe that I have some understanding of the current weakness of my own work. I did, however, arorgantly believe that I had taken a certain number of steps along a vast path towards such standards. I still belive I have, but re-looking at his work the summit fo those steps has represented itself to me. That little dot on the distant horizon is not the goal, thats just another bloody set of steps which I am not even close to reaching.
Lad, this is the Titian (most likely an extract from a previously larger work) I was talking about. I want to say something profound but instead I am going to say its charming. Whilst condescending I think that is appropriate. As a side note, I think, from memory that its painted around 1570, just before the old boy popped it.
What a shower
A delicate army of falling beads
Like a wall which breaks and washes away the memories of yesterday.
Falling, puddling, dancing over the floor.
Each drop brings a tale from above
A mini thesis on gravity
“Get the bloody umbrella, love”
A beautiful veil opens itself across the windscreen.
Those heavy, sodden trousers and dropping hair.
Welly puddle splashing concerts sing ‘we don’t care’
They say the gutters and overflowing back home.
And its flooding down town.
Hence the drawn out frown from the garden knome.
The grass don’t complain,
thirstily drinking up the rain.
Spitting, pouring, falling down
Through the fields and in the town
What a shower
He was Chagall’s fluffy goat
Clad in leather pants and uncertainty
Too little too late too little too late
He was their old broken fox
Sprouting like ants in a mist of gravel
Too little too late too litte too late
