NO ONE'S AN ISLAND AND ALL THAT

Being isolated in the flat yesterday with little means of escape had me thinking about just how precious this time to myself is to produce the stuff I like to call Art - but only as and when I choose.

It’s true; I might like to disappear for weeks on end, in fact it’s essential to get the work done, but without the fantastic network of friends I’m lucky enough to have, not to mention a fantastic girlfriend who understands the need herself, then life would be simply miserable.

The need to break out of the flat became so great in the end by yesterday afternoon that I more than contemplated using the old ‘hanging and dropping from the balcony’ routine to escape – Not as dodgy as it may sound, as I’m situated on the first floor only and had calculated my height and length of arms would leave a final drop of no more than around two metres at most. What I hadn’t calculated however was how to get back into the apartment but it simply didn’t seem to matter.

Anyway, I’m just about to go ahead with the stupid scheme when thankfully cue Dominika. Luckily she’d finally picked up either the email SOS or text which I’d sent her first thing and rang me just as I’m tentatively hoisting my leg over the balcony railing.


Now call me stupid, for I’m one of the most practical people I know, but I simply hadn’t thought of taking a screwdriver with me to use as a replacement door handle and thanks to Dominika’s suggestion I was through the broken door and out of the building as if there was a doorman kindly holding the thing open for me.

And perhaps this is my point however, for we can’t avoid the fact that we need one another to feel happy and secure in this weird and wonderful world, but once outside and amongst the throng of the street again, well, I’d just about forgotten what all the fuss was about and quite simply couldn’t wait to get back to the flat and be on my own again – You just can’t please some people eh.

By the way, on my return to the flat, there was a guy with tools in hand fixing the door – Yup, how so easily we can take stuff for granted.

NOT THAT I’LL EVER TAKE CANVAS FOR GRANTED AGAIN..,

.., because I’m still waiting for the two I’d ordered over two months ago now and I’m getting rather nervous about the fact I haven’t been able to paint since before the recent show.

Now, living in Warsaw had its benefits in this respect, but even there, though good quality ready-made canvas is generally in abundance, even there, sometimes they would disappear from the shelves altogether for weeks on end. And this isn’t/wasn’t the only thing which would be in abundance one week and gone the next.

Anyway, back to my present predicament, and I’m desperate to get cracking again, and although there’s a promise for them to be done sometime early next week, I’m not holding my breath, for promises have been made before… Jesus, if I could get hold of raw canvas/cotton/linen myself then no problem, I’d knock them up myself, but this is what the Canvas Guys are waiting for themselves. Growing up in England and yes we are apt to take quite a number of life’s little benefits for granted, so if I hear any more complaints from all those English mates of mine again about how Britain is going to the dogs these days, I swear, I’ll swing for you!

For now, remember, when you row another person across the river, you get there yourself, but never be so proud as to turn down the opportunity to give yourself a break and hand over the oars to someone else.

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Bloody Hell - I can’t get out of the building… Out of water and an empty fridge this morning I really needed to go to the shop, but it looks like either someone has broken the main door to the building or (less likely) someone in the dead of night has finally fixed the god-dam lock and failed to give me a key. Anyway, there’s no bloody handle attached anymore so the door is either locked or simply closed, and, for a useless foreigner like me, devoid of a handle it might as well be closed for good. Add to all this, the fact that my personal translator isn’t on hand (Dominika picks her moments to stay over at her parents [insert nervously smiling smiley here]) then I’m well and truly f*cked! Yup, what with my pathetic grasp of Polish, I’m quite simply impotent without her at times like this… POMOC I think the word I need is - who knows? SHIT– H E L P

HOODED CROWS PICKING AT A SWASTIKA IN KETCHUP..,

.., was the sight which greeted me early the other day on a bright and warm spring morning when on my way to the local super-market, which indecently is being run-down, soon to become ‘Tesco’… Anyway, crows lapping up a huge swastika someone had fashioned with ketchup on the pavement near the apartment block - a strange yet fateful image perhaps, for I’m optimistic that the fundamental right-wing mood in Poland can’t prevail. What will replace it however is another matter. Dominika’s thoughts on Politics here aren’t unusual for instance. A liberal in the best sense of the word, she, like many other caring, intelligent people in Poland has learnt to be wary enough not to trust anyone with ambitions of power, so the ‘liberal’ opposition appeals little more than the current administration (although a recent poll suggests a certain amount of support for change). The general hatred of communism is more than understandable of course, and the transition on the way to a rounded democracy is clearly a shaky, swastika shaped one, but for the sake of Poland and its people let’s hope it happens and democracy wins the day without the seemingly perpetual cruelty with which this country has had to endure.

AND AS IT HAPPENS..,

..,life here endures regardless anyway and remains more than decent enough (as long as you keep your head down and avoid doing anything to annoy the authorities that is - for I still haven’t managed to find out what happened to Dorota Nieznalska), and despite work being a bit stop - start again, the future promises to be as bright as the beautiful weather we’ve been having of late. Neighbours here in Broniewskiego have turned out to be first-rate, belying my worries a few weeks back about any forthcoming mayhem when I first moved in. The flat itself, although tiny, is fantastic after all too. Quiet, peaceful with great light, it allows for the kind of working practice which I haven’t enjoyed since having a ready-made studio back in the northeast of England years ago – If only the guys who are supposed to be knocking up my canvases would get a move on and get them done then stuff right now would be just about perfect. To be fair to them however, then it’s not altogether their fault. They too are waiting for their own suppliers of cotton and the timber needed to knock up the bloody things to

deliver the goods to them… Still, I ordered them over four weeks ago now and am getting just a little worried that they might never appear.

Nonetheless, there’s still plenty to keep me busy while I wait for them to materialize. I’m currently working on a couple of new ideas through drawing and reworking a couple of small canvases (as shown); the show at Filharmonia comes down tomorrow also, and on balance went really well, with two paintings selling – one from the show and one on the back of it, and I must begin reworking a couple of videos which I hope to show in Poznan in the not too distant future.

AND THE DESPAIR..,

.., my previous despair regarding the lack of any real contemporary venues in Warsaw that is, has thankfully been laid to rest by a recent discovery of two quite tasty looking commercial galleries which for some unknown reason we never came across when living in Warsaw ourselves.


So, an approach for showing at local 30 and Program (shown above) is also on the agenda as and when the two planned canvases are started and resolved.

SLIDE RULES

As a kid back in the 60s, playground rules, indeed most rules for post-war kids in general, ignored much in the way of safety… Brought up on bomb-sites as the preferred form of recreation, the ‘newly’ built playgrounds happily held much of the same in the way of excitement – disregarding, as they undoubtedly did, all of which has now become standard health and safety concerns given the modern day theme areas for kids today. As if ‘the slide’ down at the local play-park wasn’t big and steep enough however to accommodate the need for a thrill a second, it was often freely smeared with candle wax to help with both speed and the additional buzz of watching who would and who would not survive shooting from the end of the thing onto the awaiting cushion of concrete.

Lubrication to help them on their way however is the last thing the PiS government here needs as they appear to be slipping and sliding on their very own, quite hysterically, towards future political oblivion with a nice slab of concrete at the end of the ride to break their fall too. Their current reactionary ramblings and policies, here, here and here, surely can’t survive essential Polish needs as the populace, despite being subjected to enough ups, downs and letdowns to make any reactionary views of their own understandable, aren’t stupid enough to pass on the opportunity of Poland becoming a grown-up member of the world’s ‘democratic family’ - surely.

ARMAGEDDON AGAIN

Shock ‘tactics’ employed by the art practitioner is nothing new, is in truth as old as art itself, but in the last two decades or so has just about become the only way to impress a market place which is epitomised by ‘serious’ collectors who quite literally buy only what other collectors buy.

This isn’t to say that the fairly recent wave of ‘Shock Art’ is intrinsically vacuous or bad, (putting cards on the table, then generally I’m a fan of anything which is genuinely capable of shocking us into viewing the world just a little differently), but Damien Hirst’s return to a rather inane series of paintings back in 2005 perhaps marked the end of this candid ‘ways and means’ of nudging our outlook on everything human. Indeed, when it comes to Hirst’s illustrious career it was perhaps ‘Armageddon’, a magnificent monochrome painting from 2002 composed entirely of dead flies, which in retrospect now marks the end of Hirst for me.

Having everything the aforementioned ‘The Elusive Truth’ show lacked, ‘Armageddon’ seems like an apt prelude to what has followed. On viewing, ‘The Elusive Truth’ is a sad example of ordinary, academic painting which might just have been interesting if the hand of the artist had actually been at work. This unfortunately however wasn’t the case. The series was executed almost in full by a team of assistants (although enthusiasts of the show are quick to point out that "Damien worked on every one") and it shows. Even worse for me is to witness this one time rebel artist of extraordinary works such as ‘Piss Christ’ and ‘A Thousand Years’ (where encased in one of his trade mark glass boxes, maggots feasted on the head of a dead horse - in time emerging as flies only to die themselves - zapped by an insect-o-cutor), employing such run-of-the-mill means.


Painting has had its many deaths and re-births, and a talented figure such as Hirst is perfectly placed to resurrect it again for us all. So what a shame, if he truly wanted to return to painting, and in doing so Hirst’s disciples will be turning on mass to do the same, that he didn’t return faithfully to its means of production and do it himself. As a painter I’m fully aware of how absurd most contemporary painting has become anyway, but with such high profile characters like Hirst pointing the way forward I dread to think, through his many imitators, just how meaningless it may all well turn out to be.

NEW PHOTOS:

Still waiting for the canvases to be knocked up by the guys in Antoniuk so went out on a shoot this morning – Probably one of the best here.

PENAL CONSEQUENCES FOR CHOOSING SELF EXPRESSION..,

.., is nothing new, but it still comes as a bit of a surprise when it happens on your door-step and touches something close to your own values.


I was shocked the other day for instance to learn about the case of Dorota Nieznalska. Back in 2003 she became the first artist in Poland to be convicted in a court of law because of her work. Exhibited in Gdansk at the now defunct Wyspa Gallery, her work 'Pasja' (Passion/Lust) caused an outrage, the result of which landed her in court and a sentence ultimately which forbade her from leaving the country and giving her six months of hard-labour.


Old news it may well be (and I must find out what became of Dorota Nieznalska) but it remains a fairly recent reminder to us all that freedom of expression and ‘taste’ in the arts is at best a subjective thing. Unfortunately, for most who hold the reins, ‘bad’ and ‘offensive’ forms of expression gives an opportunity to flex muscles and win popular support from a majority who feel anything to question their cultural values to be nothing but a personal attack (as suggested half way down the page here by my original source 'Marysia’ on the Saatchi Forum).

BIT OF A LOTTERY THIS SHOWDOWN LARK…

… But then again ART and RECOGNITION has always been a bit of a lottery!

The recent introduction of ‘SHOWDOWN’, a competition currently underway for the ‘trillions’ of artist’s like myself who have work on Saatchi’s online gallery, exemplifies this effortlessly.

As someone who has enjoyed intermittent success in competitions in the past I can have few gripes with the idea of competition in art, but, after witnessing the whole dynamics of the thing online yesterday, what surprised most was just how fleeting and belligerent the whole online process might develop into.

Judging art is perhaps dubious at best anyway, although we’ve always had it and it looks unlikely that it will ever disappear from our means of viewing work, but going hammer and tongs at it like gangs of looters fighting over anything and nothing, (which appears to be the case here), then here it might simply turn out to be wrong.

The thousands of entries flash by on a conveyer belt like ducks rolling by at the shooting gallery of a carnival, allowing the viewer the opportunity only to shoot down willy-nillie, with the click of the mouse, whatever might grab their attention briefly whether they are truly moved by it or not – Only then are they able to cast their vote.

All good fun perhaps, but I failed to cast any votes myself yesterday and abstained from entering this time round. However, it appears the competition will be ongoing and may well point the way to a future clad in works of art which, although taking real thought and time to produce, most probably will only ever be seen flickering by for a split second online.

Next time for me then... Qué será será será será...