Having produced a particularly dynamic and well conceived exhibition, involving an artist from France, one from Italy and myself representing the UK, I fell into a period of great despondency. This exhibition took place in a fine setting in the french town of Fréjus in 2014, but the event confirmed my opinion that, nowadays, interest is a serious approach to the visual arts in the PACA (South East of France) is effectively non existent - certainly, that is how I felt at the time. The number of visitors was derisory in proportion to the quality of experience of those hundred or so, mainly foreign tourists, who witnessed the event.
A year later, I started to arise from this creative torpor by producing the above piece of work, to which I originally gave the title, '1960's Aesthetics'. This work is no more than an assemblage of various items found in my studio combined with a little lightweight painting on canvas. Wood taken from an old and much loved pine table was used as its inner frame. I wanted to produce something that had little to no personal significance, no real meaning other than being a composition of (hopefully interesting) objects making up a picture. The title referred to the fact that, apart from the drift wood, most of the objects put together would have been made in the late 1960s, and hessian was very 'à la mode' as an interior decorating material at that time.
However, that's what emerged in 2015, and so it remained for a couple of years or so. Hanging on a wall, the work was good to look at, but it could go further - as is the case with much of my art.
Being a relatively deep relief, it seemed a good idea to place it in another frame behind glass to protect it and keep it clean. In adding this other element to the work, its character changed perceptibly; it was now enclosed, no longer open; it was if 'la raison d'être' within had been laid to rest. The inner rhythms of the piece then needed to be further articulated and, to its weird bird image, it was necessary to add a little more paint. To indicate the depth of the contained relief construction, mirrored acrylic panels were added to the inside of the outer frame, and in so doing, the outer frame creates a more enigmatic space in which the dreaming can take place.
Indeed, I like to think the work now speaks more volubly and, with references to images suggesting 1920s Egypt, a new title imposed itself, ‘Dreaming from within a Sarcophagus’.
As with all developed artworks, the more you look, the more you see. I now hope this work has now reached its apogee.
