Artist's Statement (Introduction-revisited)

I live on the small island of Mauritius and it is and has always been a huge part of who I am. Throughout my life I have collected shells daily and I always keep them in the pockets of my clothes. Walking on the beach, picking up shells and feeling them has been part of a meditative emotional process in my life for as long as I can remember. 

The works I present are a collection of tactile shapes that are made out of soap. With each touch the forms change, smooth and reduce. By trying to keep hold of the physical embodiment of my everyday emotions I am losing them at the same time.

The title of this series of sculpture refers to my life viewed as a museum collection, referring to a particular time of my life, as well as the colonial history of the islands I have lived on.

Important Breakthrough Today.

I have made some important decisions today after my meeting with Annabel.

1st and most important decision: I THINK MY PART OF THE OCA EXHIBITION WILL CONSIST SOLELY OF SOAP SCULPTURES. The paintings, drawings and other ideas will have to be the supporting work. I think my soap sculptures that I am making now are good enough to stand alone for an exhibition. I think my paintings are good too; however I am eliminating them because they are not making a whole with what I am doing now..( I am getting over the idea of creating a bulk of work to fill an entire gallery space!!!(only temporarily..))

2nd: I am having lots of ideas about how to display them and I have also made a breakthrough into them: the idea of the Vitrine/Cabinet is definitely out as I want people-viewers to touch my sculptures.. Here I am thinking of bringing the touching/sensational feel/memory when I was at the beach as a form of sharing (one of my objectives). I can still hold on to the idea of the museum though without the Cabinet and Charles Avery is yet another discovery (thanks Annabel); my personal museum of memories and feelings. I like the idea of people handling the sculptures; they have a kind of fragility that I have often found with the shells- the "brokenness" of the shells lying on the beach,the effects of Death but also the effect of Nature and Time on Objects..handling the sculptures will definitely lead to their broken state..

3rd: I AM NAMING MY WORK. An important decision. An important breakthrough. By naming my work, I am linking/associating ideas. I wanted to associate ideas about the past;about the history of colonialisation linked with the Islands of the Indian Ocean. I have finally opted for: English Bay, Rodrigues Island... 2004-2006 

Rodrigues Island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodrigues) Historically, Rodrigues and Mauritius had both been colonised several times and English Bay ( also known as Anse-Aux-Anglais)was the small village near the sea where I stayed when I went there to teach for two years. There are personal memories linked there: "the essence of that experience"..my work hence represents all the shells I have collected throughout my life but also the essence of the experience of my living there and being  near the sea...a ritual/cycle/journey of bringing the past/memories back to the British "coloniser"(at the Gallery)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anse_aux_Anglais

https://www.google.mu/maps?rlz=1C2AVSK_enMU653MU653&biw=1366&bih=667&

Artist’s Statement

Context has everything to do with my work. Living on a small island known for its sun, sand and sea; my concerns are about how specific environment can be viewed as therapeutic space while nature presents us with the impermanence, death and decay . 
Sea shells have always fascinated and comforted me. There is strangeness in those complex shapes and structures that I would like to have people to react to; and also the issue about inside and outside; void and weight but also about perception and intuitive memory. I am hence investigating on its expressive potential while contemplating these as objects.

Recently, my father has suffered two strokes and is bedridden. While being fully involved on emotional geography and experience, my work overlaps with aspects of remembering, understanding,belonging, fear of loss, healing and cleansing. I have explored the tactile relationships with materials as a deliberate soothing process. I have finally settled for block-carving for I find it to be conducive to a meditative process where decision, action, and appraisal become fused in a fluid working dialogue. 
My work revolves around the aspects of presence and absence. I have used soap as material as it suggests domestic regard and is also the ordinary object to be picked up and handled; reminiscent of the past handling of the shells. By working though it, its primary function changes from cleaning to cleansing. The viewer will be allowed to touch the work leading to a chain of connection between the self, destruction and the ephemeral. 
The little soap sculptures represent a self-documentation process; a personal museum of feelings and guarded memories. The work has been named "English Bay- Rodrigues Island...2004-2006" to commemorate the past when I was living near the sea with connotations of the colonial periods which the islands of the Indian Ocean; Mauritius and Rodrigues, have endured.

Peter Randall Page

1990 "Fruiting bodies", Charcoal on paper. 12 drawings: measuring 152 cm by 152 cm, 6 measuring 183 by 152 cm (total: 381 by 976 cm)

According to his website he has

“….. always been informed and inspired by the study of organic form and its subjective impact on our emotions.”

and many of his works certainly are influenced by nature, particularly plants and seeds. 

"geometry is the theme on which nature plays her infinite variations, fundamental mathematical principle become a kind of pattern book from which nature constructs the most complex and sophisticated structures."

 "I want my forms to function as a psychological investigation, which hopefully will strike a chord of recognition in the viewer. I’m an absolute rationalist. I don’t believe in a collective unconscious in the strictly Jungian sense, but it would be pretty remarkable if certain forms didn’t have a resonance since we share an evolutionary history. Noam Chomsky pointed out that while babies born in different cultures learn different languages, we all share an innate propensity for language, and the same basic grammatical structures seem to be hardwired into all of us. Perhaps the same argument could be applied to our appreciation of visual art."

Secret Life VI

 

Peter Randall-Page is an extraordinary British sculptor and visual artist whose connection to nature began in the Sussex countryside. For Randall-Page, organic forms are places to begin, shapes that push the artist to explore his own response to them.

Randall-Page does not simply render natural forms. Like a poet plunging through metaphor toward meaning, he discovers ways to shape the form's felt energies. Natural forms are ambiguous; they are all elaborations of Earth’s great themes: shared origins, interdependence, obedience to gravity and the circle.

Many commentators have noted the ambiguity of Randall-Page's sculpture, its metamorphic qualities. His sculptures refuse to be one thing or another. Echoing life, they continually shift phase, defying categories such as animal, vegetable and mineral.

His deeply moving sculptures are sometimes calm and contemplative, recalling a variety of organic forms found in nature – fossils, fruit, pods and shells. At other times, evolving from the forms of knots and coils, they are immensely powerful and expressive, full of virility and adventure. Their immaculate surface, detail and curvaceous rhythm evoke life forces simply, directly and with great beauty.

 

Fruits of Mythic Trees, Kilkenny limestone, 1992

“I wanted to make a sculptural equivalent of an emotional state—the dark, knotted centre, the consciousness of being alone.”

A Place of One’s Own 1994;Etching on paper

In His Own Words

Excerpts from interviews with Paul Nesbitt and Brian McAvera, and quotations from Sculpture and Drawings 1977-1992:

I grew up in the country and always found the natural world deeply engaging. Later, through my work, I became particularly interested in seeds and fruit. They embody the potential for growth and can be sensual, even erotic. They detach from the parent plant, becoming separate entities full of energy to develop into full-blown plants. I have also always been fascinated by the relationship between outer appearance and internal structure, between surface and volume.

One could speak of different species as each having its own song, tone or note. There's a sense in which they are all akin, each playing its own particular tune. I would like my work to have something of this same quality. For me, when a sculpture is ‘right’, when the form has coherence and the object seems at one with itself, it has an almost audible hum, each part having a harmonious relationship with the whole.

I think we have a much closer connection with other living things, both flora and fauna, than we realize. We are all part of the same biological system and my desire is not only to know this intellectually but to feel it in my bones. The blurring of boundaries between zoology and botany in my work is, in some ways, an expression of this desire to lose a sense of alienation from the rest of the natural world and to experience the reality of its intimacy...

It is obviously a deliberate choice on my part to carve --I have just found for me that carving is an extremely good way of dealing with subtlety, with striking a chord and achieving a kind of resonance through a subtle control of form.

My work is both a celebration of the natural world and an exploration of its expressive potential - a subjective celebration of the underlying energy behind everything that lives and grows.

I am not interested in illustrating ideas conceived in words; I am interested in working from direct physical experience. The process of carving, rather than stone itself, is important to me. Carving, like drawing and modeling, is conducive to a meditative process where decision, action, and appraisal become fused in a fluid working dialogue. In short, the act of carving itself helps me to access my imagination.

Carving and drawing are good ways of tapping into subconscious feelings and images, through an unself-conscious dialogue in the process itself. The process engenders contemplation. It’s physical and repetitive, keeping the body busy and liberating the imagination at a deeper level.

I want my forms to function as a psychological investigation, which hopefully will strike a chord of recognition in the viewer. …It would be pretty remarkable if certain forms didn’t have a resonance since we share an evolutionary history.

Much of my work is derived from botanical and other natural things, but …there is quite a strong strain running through the work which is pure invention.

For example, I have often used a continuous coil which can be folded and knotted in many different and expressive ways. Fundamentally, I want these works to have the sense that they might exist in nature, to have kinship with natural form but not to be a representation of anything specifically identifiable. The importance of this, in terms of the response of the viewer, is that when one comes across something never seen before, one has to work at it in a different way. If you can see immediately what it is based on you can file it away and the perception stops there.

I’m trying to make certain forbidden aspects of privacy beautiful, closer to rightness. I’m led by that. Reconciliation is one of the important functions of art.

I’ve always had a tremendous feel for sensuality, for form and touching things and volume. I spent a lot of time on my own, looking closer and closer and closer at a [slate] shingle, for instance, and suddenly seeing the geometry of a shell, like another world poking through. My dad made his living as a model-maker, so the idea of making things was there. I went to the British Museum and the Ethnographic Museum as a child. The Egyptian room in the British Museum, the intensity of the objects, moved me. These people made the same images over thousands of years, a cultural distillation like natural selection. Everything non-vital was stripped away. That hit me like a thump in the chest. 

 Cosmic geometry ... Peter Randall-Page's rock forms at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

I’ve never been interested in making sculpture which implies frozen movement or ‘a moment in time’. I’d like to make things which are at rest, where the energy is internalised. Perhaps plant forms, particularly fruit and seeds, lend themselves to this sense of implicit life. They may have the feeling that they could burst into life but from the inside rather than in an obviously animated way.

You have to work at the gaps between different images; it’s not quite this and it’s not quite that and hopefully it can evoke a feeling rather than stopping at the identification and naming of the object itself.

My drawing has always run parallel to making sculpture. Sometimes the drawings are preparatory to sculpture, sometimes they stand on their own. I did a set of drawings a few years ago called ‘Fruiting Bodies’ which were of an architectural scale. I drew them with charcoal attached to a long pole, and they were very physical to make.
I like drawing from the shoulder rather than wrist. For me the problem with working from the wrist is that the brain locks into the mode of writing, of putting down information in a coded form; that's why I use charcoal such a lot; you tend not to hold it in the same way as a pencil.
Many of the drawings have a lot of black in them; it's a bit like carving, starting with a block and chipping away the bits you don’t want. I approach drawing in a similar way, starting with a white piece of paper and blacking in all that I don’t want to remain.

Womb Tomb

Womb Tomb 2000 granite 230 (h) x 335 (l) 270 (w)cm 213 (d) x 270 (l) x 230 (w) cm Enabled by Sculpture at Goodwood, 'Womb Tomb' was cut from an enormous granite boulder in Southern Germany. The two halves have been hollowed out and carved into concentric rib like rings on their internal surfaces. One half sits horizontally like a cave the other is sunk vertically into the ground like a well. 

Speaking about his sculpture,he says: "..stone in itself evokes an enormous sense of time which is beyond our comprehension...it puts you in you place and make you feel humble to the work with the material. As you carve the stone, one is in a sense uncovering something which has not been covered for millions and millions of years.." Talking about the material he uses, he says: " .. there is a kind of life even in the dead materials..the challenge is to try to imply a sense of life within it.." (https://vimeo.com/3803009)

These small metal castings are miniature versions of a larger sculpture and are  possibly maquettes.

 

 

 Links: 

http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag03/jul_aug03/page/page.shtml

Collecting moments..

Video Filming: The offering

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI_QDIP_czk

“Is it art if someone says it is?  What makes us value an object as a work of art?  Is it physical appearance alone?  Its aesthetic effect?  Is it rarity?  If diamonds were as plentiful as sand what would we make of them”  John Foster

After our group discussion on Contextual Essay; I found out that sometimes things that are so important to me might not be that interesting to others. However, I do feel I was doing something not to please others. I think this is the first time I could say that I was feeling totally free in my art; totally right. I am doing something that matters to me. I am also feeling that there is a sort of potentiality lurking which would show in its due time. One of the main ideas discussed by some was the WHY?  . Some people were not understanding the why of choosing things over the others (as the beach specifically;the shell specifically;the soap specifically,etc). 

The aim at the start was thinking about to make art using natural resources that was available in my environment. However, choosing this idea above others was the fact that the beach is THE place that has always been present in my life. I have childhood memories of staying at the bungalows next to the sea when relatives came to visit. These memories are happy memories. In my teens, I used to stay the night on the beach with my cousins. We used to lay on the beach and watch shooting stars. These memories are very precious to me as we are now so busy with our family life that we have drifted apart somewhat. During my University years, going to the beach was the reward after long hours of work. And my first work experience as a teacher led me to Rodrigues where I was living in a small house next to the Anse-aux-Anglais beach for two years. Rodrigues being the Island reputed for its kind people, I had the opportunity to stay long hours outside without any fear of assault or anything. I would just gaze the Sea at sunset. I think my experiences are important. They made into who I am now.

As for Choosing Shells, people who are close to me would know that I have always been collecting shells throughout my life. Shells was the ultimate thing to turn to. There was the idea about it being "beautiful", however, there was also the idea about it being linked to me on a personal level. On the critical level, some argued that shells are "common" (there is a kind of "the mundane" in what I was doing..) Hmm, I think I have to digest that and keep in mind: What is precious to me can be mundane to others!

And the project diverged somewhat with myself feeling the deep fear of losing my father. With my father being so ill, looking after him became my priority. Should this aspect be more highlighted in my statement as some suggested? 

Finally my choosing the soap material over others. What made me choose this material over others? I think I wanted to bring in things to my studio where I would work on when I was free. I collected the shells and brought them there. The Studio is a small room in my house. However, after the sketches, I looked for accessible materials and soap was one of them. It was organic in a sense and I wanted that organic element to remain. I also liked the idea of a functional object changing into something else. Objects are fascinating as study. I did not want to use the shell as I felt I had to return them to the place where they belong. These decisions were made on the spur of the moment however, they were important decisions.  One of the main reason behind the soap was the carving element which was important too. I related that to an Art Therapy process. Everything started from the intuitive and the process went on like this from one step to another. I have adopted an attitude of not asking too many questions on the why? .

At last, WHY not choosing Land Art? I don't know. I feel what I am doing at the Studio is more important. I do not want to stick to one particular mode of operating and this has always been my priority for my MA. I want to mix things up and see what happens: drawings, paintings, sculpture, performance.. 

The video was an experiment as well as a performance which I enjoyed. WHY did I do it? Do I really have to answer that? I felt it was a thing to do. Some people asked me: WHAT NEXT? I think life would be so boring if every move was to be planned..Am I taking too much risk for an important exhibition ahead? Time will tell..