Abstract

So as this abstraction fing is kinda new to me… it’s been rather difficult to gauge the success of my efforts on those grounds - apart from the fact that I find my drawings beautiful. I know some would find that statement simplistic, but I do remember hearing David Batchelor speak of ‘pleasure’ as opposed to ‘beauty’ in relation to the reception of work. That sounds ok I spose - its more definite as a term, you’re less likely to refute its credibility - pleasure is pleasure you can‘t argue with that...

In some ways I’ve taken a rather predictable route, if we take abstraction on the surface as a means of visualising the interior. The archetypal image of the artist removed from the world - I’ve been looking at books on abstract expressionism recently. Strangely although the artist themselves would stress the absence of politics, the social and cultural context surrounding it almost makes that impossible – there is always a position, which equates to a politic.

Rationalizing the expressive

Although this work is an attempt to trust my own hands and to allow them to do something undetermined – there is a social and cultural context surrounding it. For me this is where the light box comes in, behaving as an analytical frame, whether that be the science of the sociology, psychology or art criticism…

Paying more attention to 'art history', I had a realization - that of appropriation and my freedom to do this as an artist trained on Euro/American art school principles. That said I don't have to follow those principles to the letter, just borrow and cannibalise what I need...

Roni Horn 'Pink tons' 2008

And what of African or Caribbean sensibility or aesthetics one might ask? For me right now - it’s more about black abstracted from these routes, and further black constructed within a western context. It’s not an ideal just an existential project, which I know as my own truth - and thats it… Who knows how it will evolve or end?

Black on White

Untitled 2010

You must forgive my jumps between the past and present. This blog is like being in a time warp, for me it's important to identify these connections... So the current aesthetic has emerged through several elements converging...

• The black and white palette of the Dandelion project
• My continuing interest in reading sociological texts (an analytical lens for viewing social dynamics)
• Centring on myself as an individual, while acknowledging my cultural and political identity within a larger social structure.

Some time ago I came across an essay by Robert Hobbs ‘Looking B(l)ack: Reflections Of White Racism’, which was part of a wider project called '30 Americans', at the Rubell family collection in Miami. Hobbs starts off with a quote from Frantz Fanon’s seminal text ‘Black Skin White Masks’. In this quote Fanon proposes the construction of ‘Black’ identity being determined by Western environmental conditions. My explanation is rather basic, but I've also been preoccupied by the same idea...

From the Generic to the Specific

Dandelion Dispenser 2008

Hopefully you've read previous entries and seen the ‘journey’ so far... There is a stark contrast visually from previous work - currently it all appears rather cool and remote. This is indicative of the retreat from a socially engaged process. In order to protect myself from a prevailing notion of accessible ascetics (from the generic,) I turned to drawing as a more immediate and specific activity.

Two Self-Portraits 2008

In 2008 I began to draw myself again, an activity I hadn't done since foundation years... 'Two self-portraits are an attempt to reconcile the graphic smoothed out line (the vector path) with the idiosyncrasies of the hand made mark. A permanent line is stencilled on to a chalkboard; marks are drawn with pastels and pencils and recorded digitally. The drawings were rubbed out, then drawn again in a constant process of erasure and renewal...'

The ambition was to make an index of the photographs as a video, a slow, close up look at each drawing over time. It all became too emotional though - I struggled to commit to the activity. But the one recurring element, that black blankness signaled new beginnings...