Balance

Sometimes a hard thing to strike. I have more to do but less time to do it. Part Four coming soon.

In Conversation with a Spewing Parrot (Part Three)

I have been rather elusive thus far. What I mean is I haven't really talked about what my work is.

That is the point though, if I've been paying attention, to avoid those statements 'this work is about'.

But I'd like to try and give some more concrete description, If I'm forced then what is my work about?

Okay If I'm going to be pressed, to press myself for an answer then...... it's difficult.

Perhaps an explanation in comparison to something we can quantify, we do have enough of a generally agreed understanding of.

If you like, what I paint are dreaming pictures.

Visionary then?

No; I'm not Forrest Bess.

Symbolist?

Or Odilon Redon.

But my work doesn't seam to adhere to a specific format; there is no consistency in design, no real preference for any specific pictorial or painterly device. Surely dreaming pictures hold with some kind of cultural right, some ritually significant lineage.

Yes and yes but these rights I believe I just referred to were developed in cultural isolation and crystallized by the late arrival of some culture other than that which is its own. My visual cultural history and even my spiritual cultural history are awash with outside interference.

The threat of an alien influence does several things?

Yes exactly. It strengthens resolve to preserve and is an invitation to mix things up at the same time. But this is already irrelevant to someone in my position; I am defined by my relationship to alien culture and yet my own culture is alien to me. It's a blessing and a curse to some extent.

So I can paint what I like and how I like is that what I'm saying? 

Not at all, in fact the exact opposite I think. I don't think I do have a choice and that is why I'm free to act. That is why they look the way they do.

Am I avoiding the question again?

Not at all.

If I think about it; pre-colonial artists were not free to create artworks not relevant to their own cultural heritage were they? I mean they were free but the thought that they were free, or not, never crossed their minds. There was no point because what they did served or came to serve a specific purpose.

Came to serve?

Well I think the will to create, to do, to express is intrinsic to the human condition.

And that's what I'm saying?

Perhaps look at a survey book of say contemporary Australian aboriginal art (though someone as old school as Emily Kame Kngwarreye was breaking new ground culturally quite early in the period of assimilation of this kind of work by western gallery systems) and compare this to that which is considered traditional. But if we come bang up to date and see what is going on then we begin to see radical points of departure, the acceptance and assimilation of foreign visual and spiritual culture, of reflection on these new pathways into making a work, not just in painting but the use of non traditional media or traditional media in novel ways. The act takes on new significance, the why has changed. The difference in the resultant work and its lineage are clear to see but the why has changed.

How?

Not how but why and the why is cultural assimilation I think.

I think I'm moving away from the question again.

I said you have to begin from the point of 'I can't answer the question' then you're free to answer it any way you wish. I'm trying to hook into something buried deep and I negotiate my way towards that through painting. By deep I don't necessarily mean deep in a spiritual way and by spiritual I don't necessarily mean relating to religion.

How does this relate to dreaming pictures though?

Well a dreaming picture is a map of something external, a diagram even, or a story of something which to all intents and purposes is real to the people who interact with it, who operate within its culture, as it exists internally.

But a painting is external.

Yes but certain types of painting are expressions of the internal, the unconscious mind.

So like Thomas Nozkowski paints things which he has experienced and tries to find a way to express these experiences?

Yes using the language of paint. But, and I'm only guessing here, the kind of art and artists I'm referring to didn't traditionally make a distinction between conscious and unconscious. Not in terms of value at any rate.

And that is what I'm doing?

Not exactly, no.

Avoidance?

No; direct confrontation. There are those who relate stories and these are direct. Then there are those who relate…… no that's not quite right. Hang on let me get this right.

Okay, take your time.

These are my dreaming pictures but I have no story, I'm not certain of the facts, I'm not even sure there are facts as such as I've said. My culture developed not in isolation, and so the means by which I purvey this lack of a story is not fixed. Each time I attempt a painting I have so much to go on that in effect I have nothing to go on and so what results is a struggling search for a dream, a story. I see value in questioning the facts and progress is a matter of opinion.

That is the difference then? Is that what Nozkowski does?

Not really because he paints something specific; he claims to at least.

You don't believe he does?

I don't believe it matters anymore, the story of his work comes before the work and the work carries the story before it, people are looking for the specifics within the paintings and I believe that will get in the way. I believe he does however constantly question his own vision and his own practice. He measures what he produces against how he remember what he has seen and his yard stick is towards the end of modernism and into the post modern.

So I make paintings about nothing?

Don't be so awkward that is highly improbable; think rather I make paintings about as little as possible.I'm outside the tradition where internal and external are undifferentiated. Maybe I'm trying to find a way back into that in a way acceptable to my cultural position.

And by association?

Yes, by association.... the story isn't mine to tell.

It's the viewers to read?

Yes I think so.

So I have nothing to say?

I didn't say I had nothing to say I said I had something to say but I don't know what that something is specifically.

So we are talking work which has no distinct cultural heritage?

No, not at all, it has a distinct culture of being from a culture which has become indistinct and that culture is becoming even less distinct and this is a threat perhaps to some quarters. But I must emphasize not a threat to me. It allows me freedom.

Isn't that post modern?

No beyond that.

How?

Post Modernism was far to sure of itself, actually far to sure of its own unsurety if that can be so. The only thing it could be sure of was that it didn't want to be modern. The point is I no longer have the luxury of choice.

But surely Post Moderns didn't have a choice? Aping and parodying what went before and what we became. What does that have to do with it?

Everything, with regard to what we said earlier; I'm so far removed I can't find my way back to the departure lounge. Plus It operates on the premise that we can't become anything else and the problem with that is it doesn't factor in the type of digital openness we are currently seeing. It's a throw back; a techno hippy dream come true.

Am I Tom Hanks or Timothy Leary?

Not quite, I'm not trapped in the airport but I have less and less of an idea which flight I came in on. And I'm not about the loss of ego. I think ego has a role to play just not a dominant one. Also you have to avoid the position of nutcase to some extent whether you agree with that or not!

So.....

So if you know where you came from it is more apparent.

You decide what to keep? What new parts to add?

Yes but if you head west then it is to the land of assimilation.

And as a mirror the aping of or mixing of a 'western' style by traditionally non western styles of art highlight their difference, their separateness. I can only ever use a cultural style as commentary?

Yes.

And I don't want to comment is that it?

Not directly no. I don't see it as my place.

Wait though. Isn't someone like Nozkowski Post Modern? Isn't he referencing Modernism?

I don't see that. What I see is a stream of modernism which runs parallel to Post Modernism. Actually make that a language that Modernism helped to re-establish. He is using a specific language which formally hasn't changed but our reflection upon this kind of work is altered by our current perspective. The kind of language he uses has always been around I believe It is just that at times this language has been obscured or distorted or rarely seen for what it is. It's an ancient conversation; pre anything spoken and certainly prehistoric.

It's a none specific prehistoric dream?

 Actually it is specifically a dream about nothing specific, protracted, drawn out and thought through in the only way left to a painter in this position.

I can't say this is what it is?

 Because you can't say what it is. I think this is in part because this type of language is endlessly adaptable, able to absorb new ways of seeing because it is an expression of a multitude of things all at once.

I'm off track. Let's recap.

I think what I do highlights a lineage to something very old which has been acadamised out of history. Intellectualized out. Certain things had been relegated to craft and the position of craft. What constitutes craft and what raises certain types of things denoted as craft up has only just been re-established (relatively speaking). Figuration and more the exact likeness are still seen as a pinnacle. I think the hardest thing left to us is to negate this historical aberration. That is how I think I see it. It is a question of skill being the prize. What is the usefulness of skill? What constitutes skill? For painting this is still a huge problem I think. This also relates to craft and the relegation of the term craft to a secondary position. One above kitsch. This I think Post Modernism did us a favor but in the backlash we may be going to far back in the wrong direction. It's a question of value. The placement of value is controlled by the markets and in this respect our current position sees the market in a period of difficulty and this I think is a blessing and a curse. As artists we could be in a similar position to musicians. Similar but not the same and yes I have gone off track. Can I pick this up another time?

Yes. This is beginning to feel like a completely different can of worms.

The worms in the can are all related perhaps. I'm very unsure.

I thought that was a good productive position to be  in?

It is.

Iteration.

What is this about? I am going to say that I may not wholeheartedly agree with all that I write. What I mean is that I may change my mind and I will definitely repeat myself, which seems unavoidable given the problems of such a slippery topic. This is not fence sitting though. I think this is about discovery: I'm working with my thoughts in a similar way to the paintings in a different medium. And in a similar way Changes can be tracked. Again please feel free to comment, add or correct. This is a learning process and I'm always up for learning more. Thank you.

Ba-boom-tisch

http://vimeo.com/11861316

http://vimeo.com/11928913

http://vimeo.com/26359866

In conversation with a spewing parrot. (Part 2)

Before I start this interview It should be added that the In Conversation with a Spewing Parrot series is derived from a process of stream of consciousness and the auto interview. What results from this process is then edited to make more sense but what I’m trying to achieve initially is something as close to a verbal language version of my painting practice. While what results may be read my initial intention is for the recipient to listen to the texts using the Microsoft Sam reader at a speed of minus one.

Why?

As I’ve outlined, that within the current styles of painting categorised as abstract, there is a separate area of inquiry which looks similar to that which we call abstract painting but is not abstract because it is not abstracting from any recognisable external source.

 What is it doing then?

 It is using the language of paint and the physical properties of the medium to make a representation of something ambiguous.

That would be ambiguous abstraction then?

Not necessarily; what results from the process is a kind of ambiguous image, yes, but it operates perhaps more like a mirror.

How do I mean? I mean it reflects the visual psychology of the painter?

Yes but also that of the viewer, the audience.

So why use the voice of Microsoft Sam to listen instead of reading?

Well I’ve been thinking about what sets this kind of work out as separate and that would seem to be that it is difficult to locate a description of the work using language. They are paintings, or perhaps more accurately they are made with paint, with things which are acceptably categorised as residing within the cannon of painting but they could become figurative, an image, a picture, an object or some marks on a surface, represent a space and so on. An analogy for this could be a word or a phrase in one language which has no parallel in another making it almost impossible to say what that word is or means outside of its native usage.

So why Microsoft Sam?

It seems to me that this is the polar opposite of what I’m trying to achieve with the paintings and thus very close to what I’m trying to achieve with the paintings.

Pardon?

Well one is a conscious attempt to avoid the intervention of the conscious; to move as far away as possible from straight descriptive terms to a place where the best I can hope for is simile, analogy.

Very much like music, jazz music then?

Perhaps. Because Sams voice is digital and very mechanical sounding, the rhythm of his speech very non human, it seems to me that the text takes on some extra meaning in the same way as we attach extra meaning to the blobs of coloured mud we see in paintings of the kind I’m talking about but also in painting in general.

I’m not sure I see the connection.

That is because there isn’t one. But there is one and that is because I have taken something very literal, some text which would normally be read and a voice which you would expect to be human has some similarity to something made with paint which you would normally recognise as a painting and painting usually having an initial intention of communicating something specific on the part of the painter. By listening to a non human voice trying to illustrate with words something not ultimately illustratable in words the mind is allowed to wander and make its own associations, draw its own conclusions. I’m trying to be less leading.

Not to paint a picture with words or the sound of a voice like an audio book?

I think it may give the subconscious part of the mind a way to interject by allowing the conscious to relax a little.

Why am I so intent in working in this way?

I think the message has gotten in the way of the medium. People want to be told what the work is about and this prevents them from completing the work.

So I’m not telling them anything?

Who am I to do that?

I’m not saying how it is?

No I’m saying I’m thinking about this or that in this or that way. How anyone else thinks about what I’m doing is up to them but what I hope for is that it goes beyond a binary response.

Yes or no?

Agree or disagree. The ability to think is our greatest tool and it seems that certain types of work seem to reflect our current cultural malaise.

I mean we’re being told not to think? 

More that we are encouraged to think that we are thinking when really we are not. With current painting I think this is still the fallout from the formalism wars of the last century.

Would you care to elaborate?

Not today.

So what is the point of listening to this text in this way?

I hope you can describe what it is. A passage of text about the way some passages of text could be engaged with while still being allowed to interact with that text in other acceptable ways.  It takes on its own rhythms, texture, in a way I can not control; is not consciously injected into the work and thus is not, or at least less, contrived. You could describe what the voice sounding out the text sounds like, even what you think the text is about i.e. painting but in the same way as the paintings are about painting no one can really say with any great surety what this type of painting is about.

How would I suggest someone should engage with this text?

Initially? It doesn't matter but ultimately I would like to think they would listen to these interviews in the suggested manner.

With Microsoft Sam?

Yes, set to minus one.

It occurs to me that those for whom English is not the native tongue could use software to translate these text and have them sounded out in a native equivalent to Microsoft Sam.

They could then write about their impression of the experience of listening to it?

Yes and this could be something akin to making a painting about an experience of a painting.

A transcription then?

No something much less defined than that. Perhaps you could begin to build a picture of a cross cultural structural unconscious, a wider global visual analogy library.

But wouldn’t that mean the work was being front loaded? I thought I wanted to avoid that?

Not really. As I’ve said I think to some extent I’m making paintings about my experience of making a painting. That experience is particular to each painting. So this would be someone else attempting to make a painting about their experience of making a painting about an encounter with a particular painting. So at the most you could say ‘this is a painting about a painting’ but that would tell its own story perhaps. Perhaps I need to mull that one over some more. Can I leave it at that for now?

Yes but it sounds like the kind of project which could be achievable?

Perhaps but that raises the question of whether it is necessary to experience this kind of painting in the first person which I very much believe it is.

I agree.

In conversation with a spewing parrot.

How does my work work? What am I trying to do? Am I saying anything?

That's a lot to answer. The whole thing is important, the paint, the way the paint is applied, the mistakes, the chance, the tradition, the anti tradition, the history, the lack. The conscious, the unconscious. What I’m trying to get at with this work is a sample from the great well of the unquantifiable.

Is it important, a big deal?

No it is just more stuff so it is a big deal.

Do people need special knowledge to enjoy it?

No people don’t need special knowledge to enjoy it.

Do I need special knowledge to understand it?

The answer to that could be and is both yes and no. it depends on whether someone thinks they need special knowledge personally to enjoy something. How wrapped up are they in the esoteric? I think it has more to do with personal separation or connection to some group which is considered favorable and I’m anti that if we like.

How is the work actually made?

The work is made by my egos attempts to avoid the contrived. I will always try to avoid direct conscious intervention or the injection of abstract gestalts.

So if I recognise abstract gestalts in my work are they a failure?

No they are merely the representation of the loss of the battle in that particular work.

Does this make my work conceptual with painting as the delivery system?

I’m not sure of this; what I think is that with this kind of work (abstract painting see explanation to follow) you can’t put the cart before the horse; what I mean by this is the project comes first, is bigger than the artists’ ego.

What do I mean by this?

I mean by this that you can’t ever say in this arena my work is about or this is a work about.

So I mean to say that painting is about painting?

Yes.

And anything else finds its way back to the painting via way of association, via current cultural whims?

Yes and these are mutable, constantly in flux and not really crucial to the construct.

They give people who don’t really understand the project a way to relate to the work?

No it gives them a way to feel warm and cosy in their misunderstanding.

What is it about then?

Everything and nothing.

Is it important?

No.

Why do it then?

That is and always was the point that there is no point.

Is it abstract? At least tell us that.

No it is not abstract because it is a direct representation of some things.

What things?

The things which are crucial to making a painting.

Does this throw up any problems?

Only if I allow myself to think that I got it right because I never did.

Why is there no steady progression in my work?

Because this would mean that I believed it was a question I could answer and that would lead to a dead end which is often called a career.

What am I doing again then?

I’m taking it as read that I can’t solve the problem/problems so I’m trying to solve the problem/problems as they arrive and history teaches us that the answers are multiple choice and all possibly right and wrong at the same time, or not, dependent on your current cultural frame of reference.

That is like scientific theory.

Yes it is but rather than smugly declaring the last theory wrong and the new theory right, as if it were a new fact, I recognise that the facts are only right until the new fact comes along. I accept and understand that fact is not a solid immovable object; that at some point in history he said this and she said that; that people have vested interests and choose sides.

Whose side am I on?

Currently Paintings

Is that because it’s the truth?

There is truth in it yes but that doesn’t mean it is the truth and there are several types of thing which masquerade as art.

Do I have a problem with those?

No I love them as long as the people who make it understand that it is not art.

What is it then and what about the audience?

It is opinion using a form which may resemble art or be called art for ease of classification. Whether the audience understand this or not will be ultimately irrelevant but immediately critical to whether this opinion and the visual vehicle of its delivery is art.

Does this mean that I don’t think art is visual communication?

Yes and no. I think art is something which eludes any straight narrative; is too slippery for language to grasp and resides just beyond the reach of the conscious; it completes itself unconsciously.

So everything else is just a visual metaphor?

I didn’t dismiss it as just did I?

So I’m making art is that it?

I’m not sure to be honest. Actually yes and no. I’m using painting as a vehicle to deliver my ideas on what painting is for, is about, but what painting is, is for and is about allude description to some extent and to some extent not.

So the formal and that which is beyond formal?

Yes. I think it is a physical and to some extent quantifiable representation of something un-represent-able and unquantifiable.

The Universal mind?

Yes. Collective memory, time, the meaning of life, the universe, every thing. And some physical stuff that links right back to the beginning of thought which I presume we would, with our current scientific and limited we are clever aren’t we vocabulary, call abstract thought.

Which has more value?

They are both of equal value as anything which provides a jolt is a mighty tool.

To make people think?

Yes but not if that thinking remains within the strictures of the institution.

The gallery system?

Yes.

Education?

Yes but it thinks it is a help and it is necessary but not if you think you or the work is made more special just by entering the room.

But why then do we persist in adding back stories to certain types of work?

It makes people believe they understand what they are looking at and it sounds nice in a catalogue it’s another selling angle.

I don’t think you can work like that with painting?

I didn’t say that I just feel that you’re either painting or your talking about something else which would be better served by some other means of delivery. Such as; I don’t want to get personal but say you need to hear my work is about the way that feedback loops work for example (I use this example because I can’t think of anyone trying to make a painting about feedback loops) in order to feel like you can understand what the work is about. Find a way to demonstrate what feedback loops do, are, with something that has at least something to do with feedback loops. Find a visual analogy and perhaps accept that it may not be art. You can still be an artist it’s just a title which has little bearing on what you do so why think it’s necessary to have added stuff it’s just a distraction.

So am I an artist a painter? Is what I do art or idea delivery?

Again I think this is mutable I’m not sitting on the fence but trying to find out what is important to me.

So…

So I’m interested in painting and I find that painting falls down when the painter tries to add extra meaning, extra flavour/s; it becomes like to much salt.

But we have the basics then and does that not get tired?

I don’t get tired and I think you have to please yourself or there is no point. I’m not looking for a pat on the back.

What about the other strand then?

Well I find this a great way to highlight things, connections I find interesting and by way of explanation but to myself. I find that working in that way for me the best way is analogy as I’ve detailed.

What about titles?

Some times I work with a title in mind or even an idea but what follows always feels vain and contrived until I leave it behind and make the work get on with the job.

You’re bringing something new?

Yes while commenting on something very old rather than just commenting on something which seems currently relevant.

Does that mean what I do is irrelevant?

It all is that is the point of it isn’t it.

So anyone can do it?

Yes but some do it better. These are often overlooked or not but misunderstood. The thing is that where we’re at makes it more accessible to those who where previously excluded.

So what about titles?

They attach themselves and it’s probably my conscious trying to make some sense of what I just did which is a vital part of the whole project.

They could be untitled?

Yes if I want but my conscious mind would still categorise it the wavy one, the green one, the one with the spewing parrot etcetera.  Maybe it’s my attempt to say how I see it or perhaps to confound the viewers’ expectations or as a reference to how I made it; how that experience felt to me. I think I’m trying to understand the mechanism of my own thoughts which may bear some similarity to those of others; universal constructs on multiple levels and these I see as important things I suppose.

 So If I want to have an explanation my work is about painting which I believe is a way to say I was here and this is how I thought. Expunging the verbal, and the external as it exists externally on as many levels as I could, at a number of different occasions, in a set of self contained works that represent the statement contained within this paragraph.

That is what my paintings are about

This work is about a piece of work.

This work is about what something can look like.

This work is about how you can make a piece of work.

This could be how my thoughts look

This is a painting about nothing specific and so is a work about something specific

Could all be possible titles and are topics I am working on in tandem but by highlighting these things as central to my practice I have already separated them out as something else. So they will become ideas or commentaries, opinions about art which aren’t necessarily art that I will try to explain using a vehicle which is currently acceptably classifiable as art.

Thanks

I’m welcome.

The Deal?

I'm not sure what I intend for this blog but for the moment it will serve as an online diary, a rolling track for the thought train and stuff I find interesting, helpful or an annoyance. What I would like though is contribution. Some of what I write may be shaky and require your support. I will try to pull no punches; this is not a love in. However nothing I write in this blog is intended to offend but more to get the ball rolling. Feel free to join in with anything which follows. Feel free to suggest a relevant topic.