Preparing for @OpenArtSpaces and taking up membership with Plastic Propaganda @stkats @FaronSutaria @plasticp1 @FulhamRJ @skintlondon

This week is an admin week.   So this week I am pleased to have been offered membership of Plastic Propaganda, and so am preparing the documentation necessary for their website etc.  I have an Open Studios coming up with Open Art Spaces and need to get some invitations printed for two associated events; please do come along.

Opening on Friday 24th 6-8pm come along for a drink and be the first to buy


and Sunday Lunch Confessions invitations for Sunday 26th, come and share your food confessions with me, be recorded and be part of the project.

The events and open studios are all at Faron Sutaria, 506 Fulham Road, SW6 5NJ my lovely alternative space hosts. Nearest tube: Fulham Broadway.

The space is open Friday 24th June 6-8, Sat 25th 11-4 Sunday 26th 12-3,  Sat 2nd July 11-4 and Sunday 3rd July 12-3

I will be selling affordable works with prices from £35 for limited edition prints to £100-200 for small paintings to £1000 for the large piece.


More details ca be found at www.OpenArtSpaces.com

Tunisian Garden, Lost
1mx1m

I will be taking part in two exhibitions in the next couple of months

"Both Ends of Madness" at the Sassoon Gallery in Folkestone

She walks into the river Leith without a boatman...
1mx1m

and "Sugar and Spice" in St Katherine Docks 24th July -7th August

Mr Equiano's Scales
40x36x20cm plus plinth

The shop

This week I used local greengrocer Tony's in East Finchley.  Tony has a lovely new sign outside the shop.  It is not cheap compared to markets, but has a great range and good quality produce with a strong emphasis on the mediterranean

2oranges, large broccoli, celery, thyme,bananas, big pack various mushrooms, khol rabi,new potatoes, oregano, fine beans £17.20

What are the lost stories of Oblivion and Remembrance?

What are the lost stories of Oblivion and Remembrance?

In a life, in a culture, in an individual? And what does it mean when you have no  access to or power over who you are? When from the outside it can seem that all you are doing is waiting or fighting?  When the individual is just a small part in the whole.

 Especially during grief, remembering how huge nature is, like when standing at the edge of a great expanse of water, is a beautiful thing.  There are times when the only power you have is to peer into the depths and let them soothe your soul.

This painting was based on the narrative of the river in Ponte de Lima, it was believed to be the Leith, the village on the other side so suductive, that it had to be deathly, so there would be no return.  And we were talking about soldiers, who I suppose must have a relationship with death that is particular.  Roman Soldiers who had got as far as Portugal, and so that relationship must also be real, they must have had close up experiences by the time they reached there.  And it seems that death was both beautiful and frightening to them.  Understood to be permanent, and the beauty to be illusory?  And then the brave captain, who beat oblivion.  But in reaching beauty and retaining a link to the living beauty triumphed. 

Does beauty triumph?

 These were Roman soldiers,  they are all long dead now.

The universal grief are all the lost stories of oblivion, the individual stories noone remembers any longer, or half remembers, the regrets and hopes of history.  

The barriers to communication which meant they were not preserved, repression, violence, prejudice or simply neglect that allow a persons stories to die with them.  To become lost with them in the midst of dementia or death.

And the counter point, well it isn't really a captain sallying forth, it is simple things like family and friends, writing, painting, music and poetry.  The power of the powerful may be remembered through architecture, monolithic sculptures and the shapes of our streets, laws made in their name...... but even then for how long?   Individual stories need a more nuanced listening to.

Fortunate events- Finishing work- Taking care of Padma @baldfacedstagn2 @fortunateevento @plasticp1 #artwork #dementia

So I have been sorting, mounting,framing pricing and wrapping prints ready for the Fortunate Events Sale on Friday at the Bald Faced Stag, East Finchley.

 And working on my 3D piece to submit for the next plastic propaganda show,

Earlier version

Mr Equiano's Scales

Mr Equiano's Scales

Mr Equiano's Scales

This piece realtes to the trade in indigo sugar and slaves and a witness account written by Olaudah Equiano, former slave,  in 1779.


I have also been waiting for answers from a couple of applications...still waiting.... and taking Padma out for the day on Tuesday.  It was warm and sunny so I took her out to Letchworth again for the first time in months.   There are nolonger elephants on the A1M.  In fact she was silent the whole way there, which is becoming more common.  Instead of her telling me the stories from when she worked there, I was telling her her own stories back.  And later she remembered the day we had been there with Rohan and Mimi, and she smiled.  We sat under the apple blossom tree where we had sat a year ago, Mimi not sitting, but climbing them, and she talked about that day and sang some songs we had sung then.  She then told me a new story, she told me that when she was a girl she used to make her sister cry by telling her that the good apples only ripened for her herself, they only came when she went to the tree.  Her sister must have been small because she had believed her and cried.  In the afternoon she was aggitated and muddled again.  I am not so small but....

This week instead of shopping in a market I am selling prints in a market: the Fortunate Events May Fayre in the Bald Faced Stag East Finchley 11 to 4;  come along.

Indigo, Restoring voices, #Dementia #contemporaryart @plasticp1 #trade #history #colonialism @alzheimersoc

She walks slowly into the Leith without a boatman to guide her swiftly across
Oil, indigo, sugar  on canvas 1mx1m
work in progress

resistance viewd from the side
work in progress

So I am working on these pieces building up layers of pigment and darkness dealing with stories from the trade in indigo and sugar and in particular how it was bound up with slavery and forced labour. I am working at making beautiful images to draw you into disturbing stories.  The grief of these stories have an echo, in Padma's life.  She is old enough to have been born and schooled in Colonial times. And shadowing how imperial stories are cleaned up, to present shiny romantic images for consumer culture her memory is being washed away by her dementia.  She is walking so slowly into the River Leith without a boatman to take her quickly across.  And she does look back searching, but there is only one direction to go; deeper, she cannot return.

Resistance
oil indigo and sugar on canvas 1mx1m
work in progress

Last of the 10
oil indigo sugar on canvas 1mx1m

work in progress,

 I owe a debt to Turner

And I find myself exploring voices dead or fading, important to remember.

Olaudah 1

Oh Louder

Olaudah 3

Olaudah 2

I am also working on some 3D pieces called Mr Equiano's Scales, and Indigo Rebellion.






Last few days of the Plastic Propaganda exhibition at Devon House: Open until the 15th May 4pm.


And all this work has left me little time for getting to the market.

Private view, come along on Tuesday 6-8 Nautical Perspectives, Devon House @stkats @plasticp1

Nautical Perspectives Private View Fantastic images taken by Jez Giddings

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=77D1A7DC9BF0467!9441&authkey=!ANpHk0rl-fM35P4&ithint=folder%2cJPG

Indigo: Associated Stories

I have started work on some pieces related to the indigo trade.  A trade so tied up with the history of colonialism, forced labour, monopoly practice and darkness.   It is possible to buy fair traded indigo now for what it is worth, but that is a new story.  The old stories are dark:  Works in progress:-

For those of you too far away to come to Nautical Perspectives

Artist Dani Tagen has taken gorgeous photos of the exhibition, so if you can't make it there in reality, or you want a quick preview click on this link to see

 http://danitagen.com/album/nauticalperspective

Plastic Propaganda Nautical Perspective is on now ! Mood Indigo @plasticp1 @ted'sveg

This has been a busy week, getting the work ready  and nerves steady and down to St Katherine's dock for the Nautical Perspectives Plastic Propaganda show. Exhibition on now!

Then getting on with some new work playing with indigo, juggling kids and a four day weekend.... Indigo which whether in powder or block form gets every where, but has a profound beauty when concentrated, giving me an unexpected joyful edge while making my mood indigo pieces. And yet the trade in indigo is so closely tied to the trade in spice and sugar and in turn with the slave trade.... all of which are on the route / at the root of international sea trade established by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and British traders.

Dotted through this blog are little selections from my experiments and works.  The changing colours and tones are remarkable from this one pigment which are all from one reliable source in   India.

The concentration I need to make the work I want to make feels a little dissipated by the other things going on, and on Tuesday I have to take care of Padma.  And yet at the moment I think and dream about indigo.  The stories that surround it and the actual medium itself, so dense and beautiful at one end of the spectrum, and light and suggestive at the other.

And the stories surrounding indigo are complex and illusive.  Romantic on the one hand, associated with wealthy women traders in West Africa, and then tied up intimately with spice, sugar and slavery on the other.  With trail blazing monopolistic Hapsburg Kings and privately owned National Monopoly Companies in Holland and Britain's (East India Companies):  With the American War of independence: With the relationship between traders, pirates and the Kings and Queens of the continent of Europe. And also so suggestive of loss.  Loss of life, loss of power, loss of one trading system for another, one political system over another, trade as agreement or trade as a product of violence, loss of memory, loss of place,
and over time loss of value.  As one of the earliest most valuable imported goods in some way the stories of indigo are the stories of the development of that trade, complex and morally fraught as it is.

 The shop

Picked up when I in my car coming back from St Katherine's Dock I stopped on the Holloway Road  to go to the Archway Farmers Market this Saturday.  This is one of the smaller farmers markets, but it is a good one. And as I don't usually travel around by car I bought a big shop without the usual weight lifting necessary for bus and tube travel, luxurious...

Ted's Veg are here: cherry tomatoes, shallots, cos, oak leaf lettuce, green beans, 6 apples, 6 pears, 3 lemons, 3 limes, spring onions, 1 butternut squash, 4 onions, thyme, aubergine, 2 courgettes, fennel 2 sweet potatoes, 8 carrots £25.10 and he threw in a bunch of tulips for me!  And I bought some lovely meat from Marsh Produce which have always provided the best meat going.