The Anguish of Adolescence, 1993

This is the first clearly self-conscious, narrative work I produced on my return to producing Art in 1993. As with my work of the same year, Number 5 surrounded by his Associates, The Anguish of Adolescence is an attempt to find a starting point for renewed artistic activity.

Obsessed in trying to analyse my life to date since leaving the security of home and educational environments, the latter in 1977, I discovered discarded and thus untainted mementos of the past came to be of reassuring significance to me. This collage is principally made up of image by-products from older work produced in the 1960s and 1970s, and photographic reproductive techniques available to me whilst working in a graphics studio during the autumn of that year.

The two adolescent male figures, whose eyes look but do not seem to see, first appeared in an earlier work conceived in 1965, later borrowing the title, ‘La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas Lieu’, from the 1935 play by the French author Jean Giraudoux. The idea of revisiting perceived historical certainties and negating their circumstances and results had always fascinated me.

So too do I try to deny the traumas of my recent past by regression to happier times; in this case, my belated adolescence.

A sentimental but tangible souvenir of this time of my perceived sense of failure was an office calendar. The image of the attractive young lady reclining throughout June 1992 provided the necessary spur to overcome many past inhibitions and start to confront what was a terrible anguish.

Oh, for the sweetness of anguish one felt when one was adolescent.