Mental Mapping: "And There's No Time To Think"*

'Mental Mapping'. (Foreground): My 'Cement Cycle'. (Background): Work By Andrew Smith

Well, our exhibition 'Mental Mapping: New Work By Andrew Smith & Hugh Marwood' came and went, and already feels like it's receding in the rearview mirror at an alarming rate.  I haven't been even remotely able to keep up with events in real time here, so we're very much in the realms of retrospective speculation from here on in.  Actually, the tragic nature of fleeting time was evident even in the midst of the show.  Knowing it would be my only chance to spend time alone with it, I deliberately went into Rugby Art Gallery & Museum a few hours before our Private View, to spend a while thinking about what we’d achieved before our guests arrived.

(L.): 'Orfeo'.  (R.): My 'Map 1-4' 

When we secured the exhibition slot, last year, I assumed I would exhibit a selection of existing work, along with anything new that  I might complete in the interim.  However, in the event, both Andrew Smith and I ended up producing two bodies of completely new work specifically for the show.  In fact, my participation in last September’s ‘Melbourne Arts Festival’ meant that all my ‘Mental Mapping’ work was actually completed in about eight months.  Only now am I coming to terms with just how hard I’ve actually been working during that period.

Personally speaking, it became clear this would be the case once we’d arrived at the exhibition title and I started to think seriously about the themes it suggested.  It felt like a real opportunity to pin down the relationship between various urban texts, and the layers of meaning they might release, with reference to specific familiar locations.  The first two elements have existed in my work for some time, but the third felt somewhat underdeveloped.  I’d attempted something consciously site-related in my stuttering ‘Belgrave Gate Project’, but that felt like a bit of a false start.  As it turns out, the current ‘Map’ paintings provided an effective escape route from those conundrums, being essentially a return to a more formally focused, abstract mode of picture-making - but with added cartographical value and found texts from my chosen sites.

My 'Map 6, 7 & 5'

Furthermore, the itch to work in other media, besides painting, could be scratched - I now realised, equally well within the exhibition’s overall thematic premise(s).  My photographic ‘Cement Cycle’ project, and the ‘Orfeo’ video collaboration with Andrew are the fulfillment of that.  ‘Cement Cycle’ is the first time I’ve envisaged my own photography as something exhibitable in its own right, and feels like a distinct widening of my repertoire.  In reality, it may be that ‘Orfeo’ is the real pivotal piece in ‘Mental Mapping’, for a couple of other important reasons.

Andrew Smith & Hugh Marwood, 'Orfeo', Digital Video, 2015

The first is that it marks my most successful attempt, to date, to collaborate with another artist on equal terms, and with a consequent leap of faith.  It involved a definite move away from my default comfort zones in several respects, and not a little experiential learning on the hoof.  I’ve been through the whys and wherefores of the film in a previous post, but I am genuinely gratified by how well it has been received, generally.  Despite its obscure, elliptical qualities, people seem happy to stay with it, and to enjoy being benignly confused.  I hope this means there’s a richness to both the imagery and the language, that transcends any need for definitive meaning.  One viewer claimed to be genuinely moved by the twilit image of spilt paint, (always a delight to discover it’s not just me), whilst another felt that the vocal tone of Andrew’s narration struck exactly the right note.  I remain painfully aware of some of the film’s technical shortcomings, (mostly in-camera), but all of this makes me rather proud of our little film, and genuinely happy that we made the attempt.  I certainly hope to do more work in this area in the future.

Anyone Want To Buy A Plinth?

The other obvious point about ‘Orfeo’, is that it forms a clear bridge between the two, distinct bodies of work on show.  It’s the point at which my attunement to the resonances of place; - my sense of ‘being there’ as thoughts and feelings unfold at a certain site, meet Andrew’s expression of the subconscious through the weaving of obscure, often absurdist narratives.  It’s within those that he projects his own, often deeply personal, internal accounts onto the objects and situations around him.

‘Orfeo’ was, I suppose, a case of me inviting Andrew to weave an account around my chosen surroundings, and to do something a little deeper or more elliptical with them than I might have otherwise achieved.  In passing, I’m struck by the fact that he acknowledges the influence of Kevin Lynch’s ‘The Image Of The City’ [1.] on his concept of the film, just as it was on ‘Cement Cycle’.  In my case, this is fairly explicit; - the organisational logic of the five pairs of ‘Elements’ derives directly from Lynch’s ideas, and the captions incorporated into each image are my re-written interpretations of certain sections of his text.  In ‘Orfeo’, it’s far more nuanced I feel, - more veiled in poetry perhaps, but the influence is still evident to me in a number of ways [2.].

My 'Cement Cycle', (10 Pieces), Inkjet Prints On Concrete, 2015

This contrast between internally derived (Andrew), and externally derived (Me) stimuli, is probably the crux of the exhibition.  Only now, do I really appreciate just how superficially extrovert my own paintings may look in relation to his, - in terms of colour and sheer wordiness, if nothing else [3.].  It seems that Andrew’s strategy for dealing with his own psychodramas is to turn to internal investigation, whilst mine may be to become visually extrovert, and to run off at the mouth.

Andrew Smith, (L.): 'Flag',  (R.): 'The Way Things Happen', Computer Drawing , Inkjet Print
On Paper, (Centre): 'The Art Of Camouflage', Acrylic On Canvas, All 2015

In the light of this, Andrew’s largest painting, ‘The Art Of Camouflage’ feels like a key work.  At first glance, it’s less photographically oriented than his other canvases, with more than a suggestion of classic Surrealism, and even a hint of Cubist space.  However, the implications of a profile head populated by submarines, are pretty clear, and a tendency towards (partial) concealment, and an urge to dive beneath the surface are key themes within all the work surrounding it.

Work By Andrew Smith

Andrew's more photographic paintings are generally suggestive of still-life arrangements or domestic interiors, but I’m unable to avoid also reading them as spaces one might inhabit.  The odd viewpoints, ambiguities of scale and deliberate unfocusing of imagery owe a clear debt to Gerhard Richter, as does the care with which they are painted.  However, they remind me, even more, of the paranoid way that David Lynch’s film camera will regularly close in on some, suddenly threatening domestic detail at moments of extreme psychic disturbance.

Andrew Smith, (L.): 'Family Portrait', (Centre), 'Little Navigator', (R.): 'Mummy',
Acrylic On Canvas, 2015

What becomes apparent from spending time with the paintings, and in conversation with Andrew, is that certain implied narratives run through both the paintings and the accompanying digital prints, as a body.  This is most overt in the recurrence of two implied characters,  ‘Little Navigator’ and ‘The Wound Dresser’.  They lend their names to a pair of paintings, but also conduct a written exchange in the print, ‘Conversation’.  Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that the final line of dialogue reads, “But words are not for explanation”.  My own initial interpretation was to see the Navigator as male, and the Dresser as female, and I hold to that view.  However, having gained extra insight from Andrew, I now realise there is something more darkly Freudian about ‘The Wound Dresser’ as a painting, than I might have originally imagined.  What might seem benignly symbolic of female domesticity, actually imply something more emasculating, it seems.

Andrew Smith, 'Conversation', Computer Drawing, Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015

Andrew Smith, 'The Wound Dresser', Acrylic On Canvas, 2015

It’s not really for me to delve too deeply into such psychosexual undercurrents here - not least because there is, I’m sure, more than a little autobiographical content in Andrew’s work.  It’s perhaps sufficient to add that there is more than a suggestion of something lost, wrecked or discarded in the multiple images of wooden debris, abandoned furniture, scattered drawers, and castaway references which recur throughout the prints.  It would be for Andrew to fill in more specific detail, but perhaps words really are not for explanation. 

Andrew Smith, 'We Must've Taken A Wrong Turning', Computer Drawing,
Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015

Andrew Smith, 'Blue Lagoon', Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015

What is evident in Andrew’s prints is a willingness to incorporate photographic imagery with a variety of other modes of depiction, and to operate through several layers of potential meaning in each piece.  The photographic aspect allies them superficially to my ‘Cement Cycle’ in the exhibition, I suppose, as well as to ‘Orfeo’.  However, I think the more meaningful connection would be the attempts that both of us habitually make, to have numerous parallel ‘realities’, (or more likely, - fictions), running through our work.

Andrew Smith, Prints 

By bringing together these separate streams within an expressively neutral, digital realm, Andrew creates an arena in which each statement, representational convention, or implied medium, is introduced on equal terms with everything else.  His is a form of virtual collage, in contrast to my own, distinctly material form.  That interplay between media, and the leveling-out effects of digital translation are things I’m keen to take more account of myself in the near future.  The examples of Dan Perfect, Sigmar Polke, Christopher Wool, Charlene Von Hayl and Albert Oehlen have all stimulated me to think about all this in recent weeks.

Andrew Smith, 'The Way Things Happen', Computer Drawing, Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015

Andrew Smith, 'On Arrival', Computer Drawing, Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015

Whilst ‘Mental Mapping’ may be pretty small beer in the grand scheme of things, it feels like a significant advance for me, both artistically, and in terms of belief in my own abilities to make something happen from soup to nuts.  It also proves that creative collaboration can be an equable and rewarding process that need not involve endless frustrating compromise, as once I might have foolishly believed.

It’s been a wholly positive experience for me overall, and represents my acceptance that, if you’re at all serious about producing art, then going public with it periodically is all part of the deal.  If the individual, original art object is to retain its validity in an increasingly mediated world, (no question, in my mind), then sheer presence in the room remains its greatest strength, after all.  Tucked away with the work in my back bedroom, for months at a time, I live on top of it to such a degree that, in the end, I can hardly see it anymore.  Putting the work in a neutral space, open to the response of others, is the only real way to tell how much progress has been made, and if it really can cut it out there in the world.

An exhibition can sometimes feel like the end of a particular creative phase, but actually, I see the whole process as far more cyclical than that.  As I sat with our show for a while, I was thinking about the clues it provided to what might come next, as much as about what had just concluded.

*   Bob Dylan, 'No Time To Think'.  From the album, 'Street Legal', CBS/Special Rider Music, 1978

[1.]:  Kevin Lynch, ‘The Image Of The City’, Massachusetts USA, The M.I.T Press, 1960

[2.]:  Lynch himself wasn’t adverse to a little playful obfuscation it seems, as can be seen here

[3.]:  For people who know me well, the wordiness might not be such a surprise.