When I went down to London to see the William Kentridge exhibition at the Royal Academy I also managed to fit in a few other exhibitions including the OSL Contemporary Gallery at No. 9 Cork Street, that was hosting a FRIEZE exhibition of the work of Vanessa Baird. I introduced her work to readers of this blog last year as an artist who has directly confronted her difficult life as a source of imagery. She is an artist that makes drawings of the chaos of existence, everything that happens to her being grist to a visionary mill. You really feel she has no inner censor and that what you see is the totality of what she experiences and feels about what is going on around her. If I wanted to illustrate the fact that drawing can be used to respond to the full spectrum of the human condition, there couldn't be a greater contrast between my last post on the work of William Anastasi and Baird's messy, colourful, psychologically intense images; images that seem to flow out of her life and that are exhibited in such a way that they totally fill any available space.
Vanessa Baird: I Can Get Back Down to the End of the Town and Be Back in Time for Tea
Her storytelling comes from a wide range of references, most from her own lived experiences, as well as some from Scandinavian folklore and literature. She is also regularly commenting on contemporary political and social affairs as well as making observations on personal domestic realities.
Vanessa Baird
She is as happy to make an image of herself unexpectedly farting whilst cleaning up broken crockery, her severely distressed mother watching on, as she is to illustrate a creature from a Scandinavian folk tale. Because so many of her drawings include images of her very ill mother, her work reminds me of a time when I had to watch my own mother dying of cancer and of the images I made 40 years ago. They are images that when I see them now I still find uncomfortable and difficult to look at, but at the time they had to be made. I would travel down to Dudley on a Friday evening after work and travel back to Leeds on Sunday evenings. At the time I wasn't driving so I used the coach, filling small sketchbooks with scribbled drawings about what was happening and then making more worked up images during the week. I drew things she told me, stories of her life and images of her dying. The chair at the side of her bed had spirals of inlaid mother of pearl set into its arms, as the weeks wore on and it was clear she wasn't going to last long, those spirals become more and more significant. Life will at some point or other throw at you the full kitchen sink of emotional and intellectual conundrums and if art is what I think it is, it will be up to dealing with any and all of these experiences.
Constance Thelma Barker 1985
Constance Thelma Barker 1985
Slipping away
Vanessa Baird's images are much more energetic and life affirming and I was very aware that her own experience differed considerably from mine. When I was making images of my mother's slow death I had young children of my own and responsibilities, all of which heightened a sense of being unable to really deal with the emotional issues that surrounded me at the time. Experiencing the death of another is also about the coming to terms with the death of oneself. I am now much older than my mother was when she died and feel as if I still have a lot of life's experiences to process as imagery. Baird's images are however far more immersive than mine, perhaps I have always maintained a certain distance from life in order to respond to it. Perhaps as Baird gets older she will become more detached, her present life whereby she spends most of her time caring for her ageing mother, is one many people might recognise, but few would have the energy left to also make so many images about the experience. Her life experience is I would have thought a hard one, but she also reminds us that we must never forget, in the middle of sorrow there is often comedy.
Kawanabe Kyōsai: A study of the effects of flatulence
The fart joke is probably the oldest joke. Chaucer told a classic in The Summoner’s Tale. A manipulative friar seeks a donation from an old man, who angrily says he already donates enough to the church. The friar then gives him a sermon about the dangers of anger, before asking him again for a donation. The old man replies that he can have a donation if he agrees to divide it equally amongst the other friars at the convent. The friar agrees and so the old man asks him to put his hands together as if he is about to receive some money. The old man then turns round and drops a tremendous fart into the friar’s cupped hands. The second half of the story is then concerned with how to divide a fart evenly and the tale's final image is of twelve friars arranged around a wagon wheel, each at the end of one of its twelve spokes. Then, when a fart is released over the centre of the wheel, it will according to Chaucer, travel evenly along each spoke and therefore the nose of each friar will receive an equal portion of a carefully divided nasty whiff.
A fart joke from an illuminated manuscript 1344
The images that we create as human beings can be sublime and can also be crude, who is to say which are the most important to us?
Vanessa Baird's images are stacked edge to edge
Vanessa Baird
The fact that both William Anastasi and Vanessa Baird could at one time or another have been making images whereby I found parallels with my own approaches, points to the issue of life itself and how different concerns emerge. At one point in my life it was the philosophical conundrums of art practice that fascinated me, such as what lay behind representation and at another time I felt much more deeply engaged with the drama and complexity of everyday life and how I could use images to reflect on it. My recent work on interoception, consciousness and the way our nervous system is layered has made me much more thoughtful about how emotional feelings and intellectual engagement are intertwined and that the full spectrum of life; thinking and feeling can be all dealt with by a drawing practice that like a diary records and responds to life as it changes. As I get older I also get less and less worried about what my work is about and much more interested in what emerges as I make it. The journey of the work now made, perhaps reflects the complex journey of later life, of knowing a lot of stuff but being less and less able to do the things you used to do. The one thing that is still in common with the images I was making 60 years ago, being that I still just like making images and above all finding out what the next one will be like.
See also:
Hybrid forms Reflections on the acceptance of difference and fluidity
Thank you for posting such a great blog. Additionally, If you are searching for the finest acrylic Professional Painting Restoration London, contact Simon Gillespie Studio.
ReplyDelete