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Into That Good Night

A discussion on ageing, dying and death involving artists, philosophers, clinicians and other end of life professionals. 




I was given a ticket from a friend who couldn't make it to attend this day of talks. 


Blue skies and calls to meet on the beach...sitting in a darkened room all day talking about death didn't seem as tempting. 


The sunshine didn't matter- the day was fascinating. 




Time creates a wall of safety from the frightening existential questions around death.  


Human life is purposeful. We live with a "future". This sense of being futural in turn makes death come as an interruption. We cannot disentangle ourselves from this future. The temptation then is to make death meaningful but death is not an experience that I will ever in fact experience as an event in my life. 




Jordan Baseman, an American artist who gave a talk and was sat to my left at my table, showed the group his film 'July the Twelfth 1984'. He warned us before it was shown that it may upset some audience members as it depicts the real recorded audio from an electric chair death penalty.  The film was harrowing. The film used no moving images and only the transcript of the audio. The language used by those that carried out the killing, that was nothing but banal, was as deeply shocking as the act itself. 

Jordan Baseman

Mark Leckey's Serpentine Show

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good. 
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a thousand miles through the desert, repenting. 
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
      love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 
Meanwhile the world goes on. 
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers. 
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again. 
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting- 
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. 




Mary Oliver 

A Little bit of Time Without You

Ultimately I consider myself to be a hermetic creature. I find myself yearning for a small corner that acts as a place of refuge from the engulfing waves of collective conviviality.


It is not that I shy away from human interaction, as without it I fear I would get lost at sea in an ocean of my own thoughts. Yet I savour moments of isolated calm.


A space, room, corner, chair hidden behind curtains, walls, distance.


Commit yourself to your own asylum. Witness everything begin to solidify. Your consciousness begins to shrink in on itself. The clamour dissolves into ephemeral whispers that seem to reverberate around the limitless confines of your mind. Solitude allows you to lift yourself from the quagmire; shaking off remnants that are embedded and clumped in the crevasses of your skin, and take a long deep sigh.


Do not mask the wonders of your own cerebral depths with a constant desire to be enveloped by the comforting warmth of social reciprocation.


Treasure your moments of separation.

Take risks

Materialise concepts 

Embrace struggle 

Ask Questions

“It is indeed my life that I am staking here, a life that tastes of warm stone, that is full of the sighs of the sea and the rising song of the crickets”

Albert Camus ‘Nuptials at Tipasa’

My relationship with artistic endeavours is one of struggle and conflict. Nothing can seem to match my frustration that comes from my engagement with critical fine art. This dissatisfaction is what drives me to continue to attempt to make the abstract into something concrete; elevate my conceptual ideas into something that can be manifested into a visual translation.


Over the last four years I have witnessed significant changes within my own ideas about what it is to be an artist and how I have grown with this expanding understanding. I am drawn to investigations into what it is to be human and ways in which we can think about the world. Philosophy has been a dominant theme throughout these last years and is increasingly offering me a certain salvation from my questions and fears about my own existence.


Still, even in my second year, uncertainty lays central to everything that I do. This uncertainty fluctuates between something that fills me with anxiety, to being the catalyst for discovery. Increasingly I am able to approach my own ideas as an artist with a greater degree of experimentation and willingness to venture into the unknown. I have learnt that being over cautious, in concern with your practice, stifles creativity and often suffocates newly forming concepts. Thinking back and flicking through old notebooks I have undoubtedly cast aside many ideas due to my own fears of failure. As I continue on this journey I am learning to embrace failure, which I now see as an integral aspect of what it is to be an artist. Artists dare to fail and realise through error and experiment a challenging picture of history and mankind.


My newly formed engagement in filmmaking has been the most significant change for me. For my first year show I ignored the desire to fall into my comfortable domain and use paint as my primary medium. Eyes Closed signifies the beginning of my interest in filmmaking; it ignited an interest that now takes prevalence in my practice. Our group exhibition Trace was an interesting opportunity to make work in light of the exhibition theme and to explore concepts of personal discovery that had always fascinated me. My film ‘I don’t remember him being ill, but I remember’ was a process of excavation using a simple visual metaphor for the unfolding apprehension that acts as a steady undercurrent to the story. Suffering is universal yet notably the will to survive is overwhelming strong.


This year my interest in collaborative work has been reaffirmed by my participation in our second year show. The Public House that we constructed, successfully created a space within the gallery that encouraged a relaxed exchange of discourse and became a lively hub that people actively chose to hang out in. The main benefit of working collectively for me is how many interesting debates are sparked when people disagree over creative decisions .


Reading has been a vital source of inspiration, especially in times of creative drought. I read One hundred Years of Solitude while travelling through Eastern Europe the year before I started my degree. It opened my eyes to the poetic power of language and how it can map out the subtlety of life; its melancholic beauty and the ebb and flow of consciousness.




How do I relate my practice to the world that we live in and further more is it necessary to do so? I am want to become envolved in a serious engagement with the fundamental issues that we are faced with. I do not want to be detached from what unfolds and manifests in our time. Travel is very important to me and although saving up in order to go abroad is painful and tedious, the benefits I reap from it are invaluable. 

This is a good site

UBUWEB

Wanted dead or alive

Who cares about international law anyway? 

"an attempt to understand the time I live in"

Documentation

I find documenting my work a challenge. 

I like the aesthetics and connotations of newsprint. There is something disposable and yet somehow collectable in its nature. 

Elizabeth Price 'User Group Disco'

I sat through the entire of Elizabeth Price's User Group Disco and then watched it second time without leaving. Her hypnotic spinning objects set to A-Ha had an unfulfilled narrative that captivated me.   

Dust & Wind

A failed attempt at making a film to show for my cross year crit. 


Reminded me how hard it is to make interesting film...if nothing else. 

CFAP Issue 2

CFAP Issue 1

Petcha Kutcha

A Petcha Kutcha around the theme of the Archive. 

'Port of Memory' Kamal Aljafari 2009

A mute blanket of fear and dispair cloaks a family who face eviction from their family home. Poetic beauty in the everyday and a film that does not fear silence and empty space. I saw Port of Memory as part of Tate Film Mapping Subjectivity: Experimentation in Arab Cinema From the 1960s to Now and have been inspired to remain true to my love for economic use of imagery...i've been wavering lately. 

printing experiments

Found photograph

The Public House '2011'

Culture 24 Review

Grammar, Nonsense and Imagination '2011' Group Show

 

Grammar, Nonsense and Imagination Exhibition  

ZEENBLOG Review Grammar, Nonsense and Imagination

this is my big sister '2011'

What seemed to make sense to me and what I gave value to in my day-to-day existence was proven to be utterly inconsequential after simple exchanges made while I was waiting for my train. 

Notting Hill 1990 (gum print)

Behind White Curtains 2011

India '2011'