#080: The Approaching Silence

A sound and film installation taking up a full room in a gallery.  The sound of birdsong can be heard and a single 360 degree stationary shot of the corresponding forest or wood can be seen projected onto the walls of the gallery.  Each soundscape and film lasts 60 seconds but the birdsong slowly starts to fade after thirty seconds leaving the gallery silent for ten seconds while the film plays on before suddenly switching to another scene and soundscape.  

After Butler, S. and Morisson, C. (2021) We reconstructed birdsong soundscapes from over 200,000 places: and they’re getting quieter. Available at: https://theconversation.com/we-reconstructed-birdsong-soundscapes-from-over-200-000-places-and-theyre-getting-quieter-171325?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20November%2030%202021%20-%202131921100&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20November%2030%202021%20-%202131921100+CID_742766558f461b85ae3bf319bf5d2b0a&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=We%20reconstructed%20birdsong%20soundscapes%20from%20over%20200000%20places%20and%20theyre%20getting%20quieter (Accessed: 30 November 2021).

#079: The Power of Words (?)

A white canvas that features one line of simple black lettering: 

What do you sea?

#078: Relief

Watercolour of a figure walking along a beach, looking ahead.  The tide is out and the flat sand extends to the horizon.  Beyond the figure, the sunlight is reflecting off the wet sand, giving the impression that there are large patches of golden water beneath the clear blue sky.

A simple frame surrounds the picture.  Along its bottom edge is engraved: “that tranquil moment / when it all comes together. / the space that opens.”

The figure is me.

#077: The Sunday Afternoon Flood

Oil on canvas.  A view of the concourse at London Euston Station on a Sunday afternoon.  

A large crowd is spread out across the wide space.  

A few people are moving toward, or from, the ticket office at the left hand side, for refreshment at the right hand side, or heading towards WHSmiths, but no one at this point is heading to or from the platforms.

The vast majority of people, standing on their own or in small groups, with bags at their feet are looking up at the board of destinations, waiting for their platform number to appear.

#076: Frozen Puddles

Oil on canvas.  View at Maidstone East Station of people waiting for the London train (on Platform 1) in the late autumn, early morning, gloaming.  

They are variously looking down at the ground, their phone, or a book, magazine or paper.  The occasional person is either staring up the track searching for a light in the tunnel; or into the distance across the tracks, possibly watching people on the opposite platform.

Of course, when things go wrong, the scene is very different.  That's when people talk to each other.

#075: The River Across Joiner Street

Oil on canvas.  A painting of the view looking along Joiner Street during a morning rush hour.  A constant river of people flow between the main London Bridge station to the underground station.  One sole commuter stands watching, waiting for their chance to cross through the stream and carry on along the street.

#074: The Morning Tide Fills the Channels

Oil on canvas.  A painting of London Liverpool Street Station in this morning’s rush hour, as viewed from the platform above the concourse at the eastern side of the station, looking west back across the concourse, the huge board of destinations obscuring the view of half the station. 

While much of the scene is still, lines of matchstick people show the movement around the concourse, forming lines showing the streams that form between the platforms and various exits (up, off towards Bishopsgate, down towards Broadgate, and the Underground station to the right (and left)), as well as little puddles forming of people waiting for trains, or for other people to join them.

Of the people, mostly only their heads are in view, a variety of faces, hair colour and hats visible - these, together with a mix of colours, both bright and dull, from clothes and bags give the streams a sort of rainbow effect.

Funnily enough, my recent experiences of Liverpool Street in the morning are very different to how I was imagining it above.  There’s not all those many people at all.  Far more of a trickle, you might say.

And it’s completely different in the evening, of course.  Much more of a high tide or flood with people waiting and watching for their platform to be announced with little streams of people darting in between them heading for theirs; or those arriving for evening/night work or an evening out.

#073: Finding Yourself

A painting showing a maze.  

Within the maze is a person finding their way through.

Throughout the maze, along its paths, are various statues and other representations of different milestones and versions of the person that they will either pass and partake at different times or miss altogether as they find their way through the maze until finding their complete self (or death) in the middle.

#072: Silence where no sound is made (Does Silence Exist? IV): Physical Version

 

Click here for background twitter thread.

#071: the void since the last time and what the void was filled with

A painting, mix of acrylics and oil on canvas.  

Outline profile of the artist’s head, blank apart from a line marking the area where the brain would be.

This area is divided into five parts.  The first, right along the top, contains the following text in black on a white background: “ファイブセブンファイブ” 

The rest is divided into four sections.  

Clockwise from the top left they show:

****** ** ***** ******* through a suburban scene.

A figure with an exploding face and brown-filled lungs.

Scenes of the same families around a campfire and on a beach by the pier.

A figure lost in a maze.

#070: The Eternal, Ever-Changing, Oil Painting (Alternate III)

Go outside and lie down (or lie under a skylight or glass roof) and look up at the sky.  

Pick a small area and concentrate on it, as if it were an oil painting in a gallery.

Take in the clouds, especially.  

Look at their shapes, follow their edges, watch them drift into, across, and then out of your painting’s frame.  

Take your time to breathe in and feel the moment, relax into the scene and savour it.

Try to remember how you feel, keep this eternal, ever-changing, oil painting with you and, when you need it: close your eyes and recall it.  Clouds of different shapes and sizes drift silently on by as you breathe and relax.  And then, the scene playing in your mind, think about nothing else and just 

Watch.  

Feel. 

Breathe.  

Be.

#069: The Eternal, Ever-Changing, Oil Painting (Alternate II)

Following an exhibition of oil paintings featuring particularly impressive skies, viewers then go to an outside space (a terrace or lawn, perhaps, or even the roof of the gallery), where they are encouraged to admire the sky and compare the clouds to those seen in the exhibition paintings.  Do they look any more or less real or unreal than those created with paints?

#068: The Eternal, Ever-Changing, Oil Painting (Alternate I)

A livestream video on a gallery wall of the sky above it.  Not looking directly up, but up and out, a 360 degree projection shone above the viewer’s heads, with only the sky visible - no buildings or landscape.

#067: The Eternal, Ever-Changing, Oil Painting

A collection of photographs of clouds in the sky during the day.  

The photographs have been submitted by the artist and volunteer contributors around the world to a website where they are vetted* and added to an ever-growing slideshow for continual projection in a gallery and on a page of the website; as well as forming an instagram account.

*Each photograph must be entirely composed of a sky somewhere in the world - no buildings or landscapes may be visible; the sun, wildlife and flying vehicles are permissible, as are cloudless photos that show more than one colour in the sky.

#066: The Meeting

An exhibition of displays made up of notebooks.  Each display features all of the notebooks used in a single meeting, giving the viewer a chance to compare and contrast the doodles created during it.

#065: Will the rebirth happen soon?

A GIF showing people on a city street dying and rotting away to nothing as the buildings and street also start to decay and reduce to nothing before grass, flowers and trees grow from the ruins and a new species of human appears.

#064: Placecard (In want of an idea)

Sketch; pencil on paper.

A person standing and waiting at a bus stop, looking up the road and searching for the bus.  Only the person, the bus stop and the pavement up to the curb can be seen, the rest of the paper is blank.  Signs on the bus top’s pole shows that the route is the Number 65 to The Next One.

#063: On the edge of imagination

Oil on a huge square canvas. 

A photo-realistic painting of a close-up of the face of a person who is staring into the middle-distance, their look on the cusp of turning from pensive to wonder.

---

Inspired by Issue #156 of The Red Hand Files.

#062: My oldest obsession

 A wall clock.

#061: Calming view, Summer 2021 (Gone)

Oil on canvas.*

The entire canvas is filled with a close-up of leaves on a horse chestnut tree shortly after the blossom has fallen.  Varying shades of green and pools of light spread out and are punctuated by the very beginnings of conker encasements. 

*Would work well as a GIF.  Possibly with sound - or without, your mind would probably fill it in.

Dedicated to Richard Hornshaw, who seems to have felt much the same.

#060: Man is forever a stranger and alone

Oil on canvas.  A figure stands in the centre of the (portrait) canvas, visible to just above the knees, their arms and hands at their side.  The figure is in a city street scene with people and cars bustling behind them.  

Hovering next to and surrounding their head, obscuring their face (from the bridge of their nose to just below the chin), is a pine wooden picket fence.  At the centre of their forehead a remote cabin is pictured.

#059: Self-portrait VII

An image of you, your face fixed in a way that is different from how you are feeling within.

#058: Alone with your selves

You inside a room with mirrors covering all four walls, the floor, the ceiling and the back of the door.

#057: The Negative Zone

Oil on canvas.  A person walks across an arctic landscape of nothing but ice stretching for miles, edged with tall mountains.  Dark clouds fill the sky, storms rage above the mountain range.  Behind the person walks an angry-looking polar bear who leans its head down to talk into their ear.  A cloud of breath emits from the bear’s mouth, slightly obscuring the head of the person.  The ice throughout the landscape is littered with their footprints.  

#056: The British Museum of the Future

The non-British collections have been repatriated and most of the museum is now a full and honest history of Britain.  

Room 4, though, is lined with time travel machines that allow the visitor to visit the museum at any point in its history by walking along a time tunnel that takes you to the desired time and gallery start point, at a quiet time of day.  These machines do not fully, physically, place you in the past but rather you visit as a ‘ghost’: you cannot be seen by those living in that time, or touch anything, but you can walk around freely and take it all in as if you could.

Failing that: replicas.  The V&A have many amazing replicas, such as Michaelango’s David and Isfahan’s walls and domes, that excite the the viewer; and the Natural History Museum’s most famous exhibit, Dippy, is a replica - as are many of the items on display, from fossils to whales and the dodo.  If 19th and early 20th century museum workers could pull this off, imagine what might be possible now, or in the near future.

Anyway, I blank-canvassed that part because the important point is the full and honest history of Britain and a world where the west can continue to enjoy the art of the world and where the worlds where these were created can once more enjoy the originals.  

#055: Fourth Plinth Proposal (Imaginary Art in the Real World)

Leave it empty.  

At ground level a sign reads: “Look up and let your mind run rampant.  What do you imagine is, or could be, there?  Stand back, think and create it in your mind.”

The sign then points you in the direction of an app and a website where you can describe in writing (or drawings, if you find it easier) your idea for a Fourth Plinth sculpture.  These ideas are then presented in a notepad gallery within the app and on the website.  

In a nearby building, possibly The National Gallery, tablets are placed close to windows overlooking the fourth plinth, allowing people to create their ideas closeby on a larger screen than their smartphone.  If it can be done securely enough, posts could be set up at different points around Trafalgar Square with built-in tablets for the same purpose; and allowing different vantage points to imagine from.  

Advertising in newspapers, on social media and transport would alert people to the app and website, encouraging people all over the world to take part.

Although there is always the option to keep your idea as imaginary art only.

#054: Adulthood (Life's impossible game)

Oil on canvas.  Two people sit at a table in a plain room playing chess.  One, on the left, is in normal clothes while the other wears a billowing white shroud with a hood covering much of their head but showing a full, healthy face bearing a broad grin.  The player on the left has only black pawns while the player on the right has a full set of white pieces and is poised to take another pawn (they already have four on their side of the board).  

#053: Comfort Rites

Perform your own Rites of Comfort - slip into your own soft, warm safety blanket, whatever that might entail.

Let yourself feel.  

Let yourself be free.  

#052: Witness (Does Silence Exist? V)

A person standing, gagged, in the centre of a compound surrounded by high walls and control towers topped with barbed wire, searchlights and guns.

#051: Always and Throughout

Oil on canvas.  A figure stands on a path.  Before them the path forks off into different directions time and time again, stretching out before them all the way to the horizon.  The paths are made up of rooms, all individual, each with at least two doors leading out of them to a new room, or path.  On the distant horizon are many final rooms and doors.

#050: Not really there

Oil on canvas.

A painting of me, sat on the bed in my university halls room with bubbles floating in the air, surrounding me.  Each bubble contains one of my dream worlds.

#049: Childhood

One long, twisty, turny, slide. Mostly in the sun but quickly changeable weather all the way.

#048: At a distance, anything is possible

A computer generated image of a figure at a computer using the web.

#047: The Impassable Place

Three dots arranged horizontally.

                                                    One           (horizontal)          line.

One dot.

#046: Teenage Years

 A cocoon.

#045: Building Blocks (Pre-memory)

A beautiful haze of colours and sounds with occasional clarity.

(Maybe a room, inside which viewers can sit or lie down as projected colours swirl around the walls.  Within these are occasional scenes, typical of early childhood, in different states of blur, but none fully in focus.  Similarly, there are snatches of words and phrases, indistinct and removed from context.)

#044: At birth

A blank canvas in a frame.

A plaque underneath asks, “What was your frame like?”

#043: I don't exist

An outline portrait of the subject on a piece of tracing paper.

Overlaid are other shadow, or outline, pictures of scenes from the subject’s life that each leave a space for the portrait to show in the centre.

There are so many overlays that the sides merge into blackness while the subject can no longer be seen.

#042: Wherever the river may take you

Find a river, follow it.  

Sometimes you lose your own way and need a well worn path to follow, through whatever terrain you need to traverse. Making your own path isn't always easy, sometimes you need it laid out until you find your own way again.  Another way to fill up your canvas, another way to find ideas.  When you need to, when you find the right course, sail your own ship once more.

#041: The Art of Looking Through Windows

Every time you have time (especially if the window is new to you):

Stop and look through it.  Really look through it and at everything you can see.  Work from top to bottom and side to side, finding things, seeing things, noting things and build up the entire picture.  

Take time and take it all in.

Is there a story to be told, a film scene playing out; or is it a still (or a gif) landscape?

Try looking from different angles; try taking a few steps back or forwards, and look from further away or nearer: how does the view, how does the story, change?  

Try from the other side, if possible, if safe, and look in, instead of out (or vice versa), and repeat the process the other way round.  Don’t try looking into other peoples’ homes or offices, though, please.

If you cannot see through, if it’s only reflecting you, then treat it as a self-portrait. 

Or, if what you need is blankness, then just stand and stare, take in nothing of the scene and think.  This way lies true infinity.  

#040: It is different every day but always the same

A video installation of sixty 24 minute films that blend into one another, shown back to back.  

Each consists of a single shot of a clear tank of water.  Into the water, at irregular intervals, drop different amounts of black ink.  Sometimes there may only be a small amount and it dissipates out to nothing, or very little; sometimes there will be enough to darken the water significantly or even turn the water completely black - but no two films are the same.  

At the end of each 24 minute segment, the water is drained and replaced with clean water before the process repeats.

#039: The joy of bubbles

A gallery empty except for the occasional bubble machine blowing out bubbles.  

Either get involved or stand back and watch the pure joy that bubbles bring to the world.

(Best not to think about the Health and Safety and logistical nightmares that this would bring).

#038: The Sculpture Garden of Your Heroes

A sculpture garden filled with all the statues of all the heroes you have had in your life.  Who would enter your roll call, and when?  Would the styles used change over time?  Have any of your statues faded over time?  Whether from memory or deeds?  Are they eroded or mossy, have they become overgrown?  Have their plaques, once pristine, become illegible?  Have they been unceremoniously removed, an empty plot left to overgrow, or a shiny replacement erasing the memory?  Have they been reordered over time, statues gaining new importance or prominence?  Do you walk through your garden with pride?  Or is there the occasional wince?  And, do you feature at all?

#037: Paradise is...

Whatever you want it to be.

(Jorge Luis Borges felt that paradise would be a library, rather than a garden, and, for many, this would be paradise.  I know I would like it.  But it would not fit everybody.  Some might feel anxious forever, whether because reading is not for them or because, despite having forever, they still feel like they could never read it all.  

For paradise to be paradise, it surely needs to be whatever you want it to be, a completely changeable and controllable tailored experience.  Whether gardens or libraries or… well, a little bit of everything you love.

And that’s just the paradise beyond.  Creating paradise now is trickier but, in your mind, you can wonder about paradise here, and beyond, if your own patch is not quite there yet.

And, perhaps, this is what our last moments will be.  Creating that paradise, whatever you want it to be, as your final neurons fire.)

#036: Belief

A stand, or column, of a height and size appropriate for you.  Upon it sits the physical representation of something you believe.   

#035: Waiting for art

A blank canvas.

Or an empty gallery.  Or an empty space on a gallery wall.

#034: Waiting for the art of the play

A table with two chairs.  On the table is a chess set, clock, notation notebook and pencils all neatly arranged and set up ready to play.