Black Splatter Movement

I came across I book about the month ago and haven’t wanted to take it back to the library. Information is Beautiful by David McCandless, its filled with data from the internet, crunched and formulated into highly aesthetic diagrams. Some of these diagrams and charts utilise figuration, some are abstract – but the the book is also about bringing together seemingly profound and trivial information on the same plane. Now he also wrote an essay on Postmodernism, which is processed web information like the rest of the book. I found it short and succinct and very optimistic (unlike other texts I've tried to read) but not completely naïve – if we embrace complexity, diversity and ambiguity there is a danger at arriving at no meaning – he calls it a grey goo.

While participating in the march last week, I was thinking about the temporary nature of collective political identity – I wasn’t going to see those people again but we banded together, under one cause for a moment and then dispersed… I’m jumping now, but I had also attended a talk the week before at INIVA. At some point in questions, the inadequacy of the term ‘Black’; used as broad brush to politically encompass very different ethnic communities was discussed. In a sense that inadequacy is what brought the International Institute of Visual Arts into being.

Anyway they found a way around that one – but in the end my little niece still has to workout whether she is black or brown – that’s a big distinction for a 6 year-old to make. To be honest I've always struggled with never being ‘Black’ enough. I'm working in 'watery' ambiguity but going back to McCandless it might more resemble his meaninglessness goo.

References

Abstract Expressionism historically has been posited as a heroic and pure ideal; certainly in relation to 50’s American manifestations – it’s almost like a bad rep that’s proved difficult to shirk. Apart from the political appropriation of the abstract, it’s always struggled with being esoteric, since many cannot recognise themselves or their values with in it. It gets me thinking again about consciously trying to make ‘universal’ artwork – I’ve heard this word a lot recently. I’m kinda sick of it, cus in reality we work in very small clusters of common interest. The very large ones cost a great deal to maintain – like our crumbling economic one.

Now I make black blobs on paper sometimes, I’m not sure how long I’m gonna make them. But I found myself at a symposium about abstract art a couple of weeks ago. I was intrigued to see how artists positioned within this field approached the abstract conceptually and methodologically. As I suspected it wasn’t simple, the exhibition that accompanied the event was a vague commonality between the artists involved. Each had very different perspectives and all were very conscious of being branded in way that felt limited. Naming is tricky as it brings you to a historical context, requiring confrontation, complicity or avoidance – take your pick. And of course that confrontation varies in relation to who it is, and where they are. So as a student of art, a teacher of it, as well as being black, a woman (and any other bandings I could fit under) abstraction in relation to expressionism is a tad problematic. I put my drawings on bulky old technology, in a time when ‘identity’ seems to be a debate left in the 80’s and 90’s.

One cup

Sneak preview of 'Attempts to get Inside the World'

Processing...

Perfection

I remember always wanting to grow up quickly as a child. Watching my uncle do his hair before partying is one of those vivid memories of envying adulthood. It was a very drawn out and methodical process – my Uncle’s hair; patting and trimming stray hairs, covering the hair before easing his chosen garment on. After many years of looking at photos from the 70’s, I always believed he had the perfect Afro, the perfect circle and what a technical feat that was. I used to watch him on the stairs at my grandmas every Saturday, wishing I could go out too.

Making ‘Maurice’ earlier this year was also very drawn out. A geometric ideal took over, making the process really compulsive. Every time I returned to the studio, I had to do more – it wasn’t right – it needed correction.

So I’ve continued cutting and combing, I’ve been filming it for weeks now, I’m not sure what form its going to take, but I’ve also been thinking about the noise in the studio to.

I’m not very good with silence…

Looking up

Minimal?

Things that happen again: for a here and a there 1988

Roni Horn

“Act of looking at an object any object, is transfigured by gender, race, social-economic class and sexual orientation’ Felix Gonzalez-Torres on Roni Horn’ The Gold Field’ 1990

I read an essay some time back by Dawoud Bey, focusing on black artists working abstractly. The essay went on to propose that many of these artists fell by the wayside due to a lack of political potency in the work. I don’t know really… but I don’t recall encountering many black abstract artist during my studies. There is particular trajectory for black and feminist art, which I accepted without question as my lineage and example. The politic and the theory competed with the art – perhaps in many cases preceded it. This made for extremely ‘grounded’ work; work that had a ‘rationale’ or an argument for being in this world. In some respects, this approach did little for my belief in the art object itself. I have more faith now, but I’ve always got to see some part of the world of relations around it.

This is why I keep mentioning influences… in the early days it was about identifying with the artists persona - now I try to find conditional parallels (if that make sense). For example one aspect of Roni Horn’s work is to do with her androgyny, the potential change in perception according to where, when and who encounters her. Her use of the double is an attempt at articulating this experience.

Initially the work appears incredibly formal, her sculptures continue the minimalist ideal, but she moves it on. In her glass works Horn takes Judd’s preoccupation with surface, but its not a fortress, she offers a solid, highly reflective but penetrable form. Her drawings totally blew me away when I saw them a couple of years ago, they begin as very simple lines, which she duplicates, on other pages tripled or quadrupled even. Then over time they are incorporated into one drawing, one multifaceted surface, lots of seams and joins – apparently she relates these to tectonics.

I am intrigued by Horn’s project, which (she admits) is heavily influenced by the time she spends in Iceland – where the Earths geothermic force is immanent. That experience has brought about a metaphor; the earth’s liquid core and living surface, with the mutable and sometimes volatile nature of subjectivity. I haven’t managed to walk around springs or up volcanoes, but I keep looking up at the wind through the trees...

Thinking about currents

Jessica Stockhloder 1994