Michael Palmer

Stage 2 of the MA course has started actually with the completion of a painting. This was started a few weeks ago but put to one side during the build up for the stage 1 hand in and associated essay writing. Once this had all be completed I returned to the painting.

It is a continuation of the theme of the isolated figure confronted with a dilemma, the subject revisited from a previous work ‘White Bridge’ sourced from an archival photograph of my son on a very wet semi submerged rope bridge. This painting has an element of realism in the palette but is still rather loose and simple. The cropping gives the work a personal dimension as the viewer feels quite close to the central figure yet distant enough as to feel detached. The cropping also has a cinematic feel, like a still from a film with the body emerging from all four sides of the 76×50 canvas and as such does give a sense of drama and anticipation. As with the ‘White Bridge’ painting the figure is off centre, you can feel the movement of the bridge despite it appearing to be a bright day. The half seen second figure is looking towards the bridge offering a second dynamic to the work, they are holding the hand rail for stability but is this figure offering encouragement and advise or hindering passage?

Tate Modern has a small but varied collection of Wilhelm Sasnal’s work on permanent display. Born in Poland in 1972, He typically identifies a digital image online or from his own photographic archive rather than images found in printed publications. Usually Sasnal will complete his paintings in one sitting over the course of a single day as is the case with this series of paintings, created very quickly and spontaneously in a matter of days.
Upon entering the gallery space, you are immediately presented with Sasnal’s ‘Gaddafi 3’ (2011). This work forms part of a 3-painting series which was created in the stark aftermath of the death of the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi at the hands of the Misrata Militia in October 2011 and is the only painting in the series to depict the corpse of the deposed leader and yet without the paintings title it would be impossible to know who was being observed in this image. This is not portraiture. As with the entire series ambiguity and confusing permeate through each painting, graphic and disturbing and yet all seem to have a solemnness about them, maybe the enormity of what had transpired fell on the shoulders of those present? The scale and palette of this work gives it a direct physical relationship between the viewer and the militia who are observing their quarry. The dramatically foreshortened figure literally falling off the bottom edge of the canvas recalls Andrea Mantegna’s painting Lamentation of Christ (1480). And is a work driven by his internal conflict after the former leader’s corpse was displayed on a supermarket Refrigerator’s floor. (fig.1)

The reading of this work, to me, gives a clear insight to Sasnal’s abhorrence at what had been portrayed through mass media, his use of materials, the speed he created the work gives a very precise narrative where the viewer is made to feel like an uncomfortable voyeur, uneasy at what they are witnessing, the starkness of the imagery is chilling. Is this a lamentation of a dictator, or possibly the level the news feeds and networks will sink to ‘to get the story’? or was he trying to give the body some sort of dignity? Sasnal is documenting and recording what he sees as proof of his time and of his world.
Hanging opposite you find ‘Gaddafi 1’ (2011) fig.2 This smaller painting depicts the body of the dictator viewed from an elevated and inverted perspective, but rather than show the corpse directly, Sasnal shows an amorphous mass of impasto resting on what appears to be a mattress. The paint alludes to the ripped and torn body, contrasting Sharpley with the thinly washed background.

 

Next to this but on the opposite side of the entrance you see ‘Gaddafi 2’ (fig.3) Perspective here is from below, looking up at the militia. This gives a posthumous view and a potential empathy with the victim. In composition the painting in Sasnal’s typical style in that the original digital image has been cropped to great effect which focuses on the observers while the use of colour is economical, and a simple palette of pail pinks and greys used to present an image stripped bare of superfluous brushwork. The victim is powerless, and with perspective the viewer is equally bereft of agency with the shadowed militia bearing down upon them. Overall, I found this series of paintings very powerful, not just because of my own memories of the news broadcasts or how the west congratulated themselves on a job well done but, in the way, Sasnal has described the public imagery in a very personal yet simplistic and graphic way.

 

As a small project entitled ‘Curatorial Play’ the entire MA class were split into two groups, each group would use one of the two project spaces on campus to curate a small group show, we were given just over an hour to discuss and install the show. My group were given the upstairs project space and included Robert, Dawn, Meng and Nadine. The works included were varied from film projection and painting to collage and assemblage.

I included my painting entitled ‘White Bridge’, hung in the centre of the exhibit. On completion each respective group would assemble in the spaces to hold a whole group peer crit. The general consensus of our show was that it was well hung and successful. The overall tone of the show was one of melancholy and remembrance with an archival feel. There were works which explored longing of the past and locked secrets together with a sense of foreboding.

After the crits had taken place the shows were rehung but not by their respective artists but by other students and out of sight of the original artist. My work was rehung by Tianxing, he chose to hang the painting on an adjacent wall and at a higher level, this in itself was not an issue as it is hard to radically rehang a canvas in the same space as previously, however, it was rehung very close to a door and light switches with very little thought, consequently the painting was not show to its best. But as an exercise it did highlight how disinterested people can have a negative affect on the display of ones work and is a lesson for future curation and exhibitions.

The current year 2 BA fine art students at UCA invited me to be part of their external winter exhibition entitled ‘Worlds Between’ being held on 6th December at Lower Barrihurts Farm in Surrey. This group exhibition exploring the Heterotopic principles of subverting the function of a space  included the artists James Paddock, Mercedes, Noelle Genevier, Annie Crawford, Maggie Eve Coffee and myself.

The venue was an agricultural barn on a working farm complete with mud and farm machinery. The art works included film, sculpture, collage and painting.

Back in the summer of 2019 on a day out with the family at The Wildfowl & Wetlands  Trust reserve in London I took many photographs, not just of the wildlife but also of the family enjoying themselves. One image in particular caught my imagination. My son was attempting to walk across a low slung, single width rope bridge across a pond, the pond was not particularly deep but nevertheless it was just as wet as any ocean! As he attempted to walk across the bridge it started to sink towards the water,  at first just kissing the surface, with another step it began submerging itself to a depth of a few centimetres, this caused him a dilemma and some trepidation, does he continue walking and inevitably getting his feet wet or about turn and come back? Unfortunately for him I was blocking one end and my partner the other, the dilemma played out with him attempting several steps towards the middle of the bridge and then stepping back, reminiscent of a child running towards the waves on a beach then fleeing back as the waves crash in. With a very brave and concentrated approach together with laughter from the rest of us he finally made it across the bridge, with two very wet feet!

The dilemma and the tentative steps reminded me of many aspects of childhood and parenthood, My teenage son is entering a new stage of his life, he is taking tentative steps forward and in essence away from me, he is beginning his own journey, I was clearly behind him, with motivation and constant encouragement but he was taking his own steps, making his own decisions and ultimately carving his own path, he is not a child anymore. The uncertainty of adolescence, the fear and excitement of the future was all played out in this photograph.

The painting that emerged from this image clearly shows a young man facing the future, back towards the viewer, unaware of their gaze, off balance and pausing before the next step. He is holding on tightly for reassurance and any sense of stability. The bridge has no floor or rigid surface to anchor to and appears to be crossing a void, the bridge has no visible end, it fades into eternity, the future is unseen.

After having various 1 to 1 tutorials with the artists Nick Goss and Danny Rolff my understanding of my own practice shifted and I feel much happier for it. It has been more this issue of authorship than anything else, my choice of photographic images can come from many sources but how I translate or re-imagine them is the part that’s altered. The disconnect I sometimes felt with the image has now shifted into a more positive sense of inclusion and validity, I am part of the contemporary art conversation, I can allow myself to paint what and how I want, I do not have to justify why I chose yellow or why the perspective is not natural, it is the colour or perspective I wanted to use and that is justification enough. This shift is obviously incumbent of my own personal psychology and few people will see benefit other than through my output but internally I feel this is a seminal moment in my artistic education, so I publicly thank Nick and Danny.

 

Following on from painting ‘Unhappy’ I was in the studio and feeling the emotion and chose to make an abstract painting using the same palette and riding that wave. The small 30x10cm painting that followed felt very visceral and energised being created in that precise moment. It holds all those mixed and often contagious anxieties found in the previous painting but far more raw in execution. Bold colours applied thickly with the palette knife, scratched and forced onto the canvas, lines scrapped into the thick impasto with more than a passing glance to Dante’s Inferno.

 

My son Sebastian is currently studying A Level photography and is in the process of building a portfolio. One of his recent photographs taken of his friend Alex appealed to me for its subjectivity and content. The monotone image shows a young man wearing a hooded top, head lowered and face covered outside in the rain. Brightly coloured writing on his clothing is reversed and inverted but is still legible but conflicted.

I found this image both disturbing and very powerful, it spoke of the issues young people especially young men face today with identity, position in society and social pressures.

I chose to make a painting based on this image with slight  alterations keeping its lineage very clear. The main colour way would be red and black,  after a few experiments chose to retain the original colour and design of the text. The image I feel shows a range of emotions despite no facial features being visible. Teenage anxieties and frustrations, their vulnerabilities in our modern cultural and socio-economic environment, their prospects of education or employment and the uncertainty of their immediate and long term future. The text discovered is reversed but uncomplicated, it shows a repression and menace but is trying to be heard like a cry for help as much as a shout of defiance. The figure is faceless, showing signs of being non-human, an alien of sorts or animalistic, threatening and menacing or vulnerable and hurting?

Reflection is a good use of time, after recent crits which have received a mixed response, I have thought for some considerable amount of time about the personal psychology in my work and it usually comes back to my own rather poor childhood, loss of control and a loss of a voice, accompanied with instability in the home and my personal life. This combines together to create an anxiety around the subjects of loss, fear and mental health. These factors manifest into my art, they are not usually concerned with specific colours or shapes, Colour is very useful but often the absence of colour merely gives a veneer of nostalgia or a romanticised vision of calm or the utopia I crave, when ‘things’ were simpler or uncomplicated, this of course is not a reality but an imagined truth one wishes to adopt or use as artifice. Pouring your subjectivity on to a canvas is a projection of your psychology.

“…loss of control is always a source of fear, it is however, always the source of change.” (James Frey)