#332: On being alone, being in groups, loneliness and belonging

A pentaptych of oil on canvas paintings.

The five paintings are arranged in the same manner as the dots on the 5-side of a six-sided die.  

1 - On the top left is a painting titled I’m Alive in Crowds I and II which is split horizontally into two along the middle and shows two similar scenes.  At the top is a football crowd in black and white all staring forward, fixated by the game unfolding in front of them.  One person, beaming, is marked out in colour.  

The bottom half shows a crowd at a music festival, in colour, seen from the stage, and shows everyone watching and enjoying the band on stage.  The same person that was shown in colour in the top half can be seen at the very centre. 

2 - On the top right is a painting, titled A Family Building, that shows a family sitting at a dining table and playing the game Carcassonne.

3 - In the centre is a painting of a bedroom, titled Alone.  A window can be seen in the wall to the left and a bed runs alongside it into the corner of the room.  In the foreground, next to the bed are four mismatching full CD towers with CDs stacked up in front and alongside.  By these, at the end of the bed is a large wooden record box on top of which is a glass of beer.  Next to the bed on the back wall is a bookshelf full-to-bursting with books as well as a hifi on top (the screen on the hifi shows the number 6).  Next to this in the other corner is a PC on a stand.  Along the right hand wall is a wardrobe.  The walls are painted navy at the bottom half, white at the top with a Tottenham Hotspur border in between.  On the back wall are three posters: the film poster for Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, a poster with a still from the train chase scene from the The Wrong Trousers and a football-themed Coca-Cola poster featuring the Football is not a matter of life or death, it’s more important than that quote from Bill Shankly.  Above the PC is a corkboard covered in a variety of ephemera including festival programmes on lanyards, newsletters, photos and drawings.  To the side of the PC on the right hand side wall can be seen a small slither of a poster advertising an Amnesiac listening event.

Throughout the painting the same person can be seen undertaking different activities: lying on the bed sleeping (a thought bubble showing their dream: a version of A Family Building where only the face of one figure is clear), sitting on a beanbag leaning against the wardrobe reading (Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake), sitting on the bed writing in a spiral bound notebook using a mechanical pencil, sitting on the floor in the middle of the room reading the liner notes of the CD being listened to (We Love Life by Pulp - on the floor next to them is the next one ready to go: This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours by Manic Street Preachers), sitting at the computer typing up an Imaginary Art piece (#328: Nothing fits like it used to fit), sitting at the near end of the bed watching a film on the (outside of the painting) television, their face lit up with the light from the screen, the reflection of what they are watching in their eyes (a shot of Gollum from the Mines of Moria scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring), lying on the floor daydreaming (a thought bubble showing the dream: another life where they are a former footballer turned musician with a love life in an imaginary country).  

Scanning the painting would reveal another one underneath that shows the same room, much emptier, the bed across the back wall, a different wardrobe on the right and a young teenager playing with a train set in the big empty space.  A portable combined radio, CD and Tape Player close by with a copy of Oasis’ Wonderwall CD single lying next to it and the display of the player showing the number 4.

4 - At the bottom left is a painting titled I Drown in Crowds 2 of three people sitting together in a pub with drinks and empty glasses on the table in front of them.  The two on either side talk animatedly across the third who looks out at the viewer. 

5 - At the bottom right is a painting titled I Drown in Crowds 3 showing a family gathering in a sitting room.  People of all ages are shown milling about, drinking, talking and playing.  At the back, in an armchair, sits someone staring straight out at the viewer.

Not all of this is necessarily always true: it is an imperfect work.  Life is full of contradictions.  Sometimes the opposite will be true.  Often the biggest things are said in the fewest words (here, at least).  Alone can be lonely, or not.  Being with others can be lonely, or not, in all situations.  Sometimes one, sometimes the other.  More often than not.

#331: I Drown in Crowds

Oil on canvas.

A crowd scene with someone right in the middle, only just visible with only their face and arms showing.  Their arms are waving as if they are drowning and calling for help.

#330: Ruins have beauty

Find them, see it.

Everything does and everyone should.

#329: Whatever you want it to represent it shall be

A coffee cup (disposable).

Or

Take any item and assign it a meaning.  Use that meaning in daily life, art, stories, poems etc until it catches on and x will always mean y.  

#328: Nothing fits like it used to fit

A family photo in a frame with the title written above and below, “but so much fits so much better and so much fits that I thought never would.”

#327: Empty

A blank canvas.

#325: Déjà vu

Imagining something you have imagined before but had forgotten until now.

Or

An artwork resembling one you have imagined before.

For example:

#326: Desk (Self-portrait II XXI)

If your desk, or workspace, was an artwork, what would it say about you?

(I cleared and tidied mine in preparation)

#324: Hall of Records

Oil on canvas.  A painting showing a Hall of Records relating to you.  

At its entrance, you can be seen, sitting at a desk, acting as a gatekeeper to these records - a mass of shelves lined with books, records and other items.  

Beyond the desk multiple versions of yourself can be seen looking at or going through the records, which are ordered into different sections, each with a sign above the shelves.  

In a far corner is a door marked “Restricted Access”.

At the bottom of the frame is the inscription: “I need my memories. They are my documents. I keep watch over them.” - Louise Bourgeois.

#323: Let memories come to you

Oil on canvas. A medieval hallway scene painted in the style of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  The scene flows through from a console table on the left to the open front door on the right but is set in two halves.  On the right, someone is answering the door.  At the door is a younger version of themself holding out a sculpture of a lightbulb to them.  On the left hand side, the same person is turning away from the door, reaching out to vases of dying flowers each filled with one of the following - rosemary, tulips, forget-me-nots, sweet williams and periwinkles. A runner on the console features a simple pattern containing buttercups.  

On the wall behind are several pictures, from left to right, including a spider with very long legs that go straight up giving it a tall appearance, a hand reaching out and being received by two open hands, a wire framed cage with a spiral staircase inside and a woman with a house for a head.

Along the bottom edge of the frame the following is inscribed: “I need my memories. They are my documents… You have to differentiate between memories. Are you going to them or are they coming to you? If you are going to them, you are wasting time. Nostalgia is not productive. If they come to you, they are the seeds for sculpture." - Louise Bourgeois.

#322: No Surface : All Feeling (3 Ideas)

Oil on canvas.

A painting of a naked, flayed person in the style of The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci - but with their eyes closed, grimacing, and with full colour and detail.

Or - Someone naked, and uncomfortable at their desk in a large open plan office.

Or - A canvas spilt into four equal parts: a scene of people praying in church, one of people walking through a winter scene, a flayed naked person, and, finally, a painting of someone asleep in bed, a representation of their dream on their forehead.

#321: Solitude

Oil on canvas.  Pictures of the solitude experienced at different times of life.  Some scenes show good times, some not so good, some bad, of people being alone on purpose and being alone, or isolated, without wanting to be.  Every side of solitude is shown: playing as a child - operating my train set, playing in the garden, kicking a football around pretending to be other people, walking to school through the park, all the dreams in my head, listening to songs, reading on a beanbag, writing in the University libraries, reading or listening to music or watching the world go by from the commuter coach and train, walking through London, listening to music in the car, reading on the sofa early in the morning, reading on the train, reading on the bus, working from home, living in Wing Island, a mother at home with a new born baby, a prostitute waiting on the street, a prisoner in a cell, a housewife working, a crane driver, a train driver, a lorry driver, an old person in a chair, an old couple sat together, one of whom does not remember the other, a person in a crowd,  ….

#320: Either ignore it or celebrate it (What is to be done?)

A collage of all the worst events and people in the world, both now and throughout history, underneath which are the following words:

'Either ignore it or celebrate it.' What a fucking futile attitude. Don’t say anything bad, just ignore it or celebrate it. So what about fascism then? We don’t like it, we’ll just ignore it.

(I ask you again what is to be done).

Nicky Wire, The Quietus and 30-Year War.

#319: You have to do the work to earn the rest

Oil on canvas.  A painting of a man in an armchair reading a newspaper.  Behind, his wife can be seen hoovering, making dinner, cleaning the windows, making tea, dusting and other jobs.

#318: Masking Tape Reminder

Take a reel of masking tape.

Stick lengths of it along the edge of a shelf, or shelves, across your headboard, along a wall… somewhere you look at a lot. 

Write a meaningful message for yourself along it.

Preserve. 

Refer back to it whenever that message is needed.

Along the shelves in my imaginary office-slash-writing room:

There She Goes, My Beautiful World by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

The wintergreen, the juniper

The cornflower and the chicory

All the words you said to me

Still vibrating in the air

The elm, the ash and the linden tree

The dark and deep, enchanted sea

The trembling moon and the stars unfurled

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes again

John Wilmot penned his poetry

Riddled with the pox

Nabokov wrote on index cards,

At a lectern, in his socks

St. John of the Cross did his best stuff

Imprisoned in a box

And JohnnyThunders was half alive

When he wrote Chinese Rocks

Well, me, I'm lying here, with nothing in my ears

Me, I'm lying here, with nothing in my ears

Me, I'm lying here, for what seems years

I'm just lying on my bed with nothing in my head

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes again

Karl Marx squeezed his carbuncles

While writing Das Kapital

And Gaugin, he buggered off, man

And went all tropical

While Philip Larkin stuck it out

In a library in Hull

And Dylan Thomas died drunk in

St. Vincent's hospital

I will kneel at your feet

I will lie at your door

I will rock you to sleep

I will roll on the floor

And I'll ask for nothing

Nothing in this life

I'll ask for nothing

Give me ever-lasting life

I just want to move the world

I just want to move the world

I just want to move the world

I just want to move

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes again

So if you got a trumpet, get on your feet,

Brother, and blow it

If you've got a field, that don't yield,

Well get up and hoe it

I look at you and you look at me and

Deep in our hearts know it

That you weren't much of a muse,

But then I weren't much of a poet

I will be your slave

I will peel you grapes

Up on your pedestal

With your ivory and apes

With your book of ideas

With your alchemy

Oh come on

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

Send that stuff on down to me

Send it all around the world

'Cause here she comes, my beautiful girl

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes, my beautiful world

There she goes again

Or: Keep going, keep finding things, keep writing, let people know.

#317: Be Natural (How easy is it?)

Three word paintings, evenly spaced and sized, hung across the wall of a gallery.

The words on each painting are a follows:

1 - Be natural.

2 - No acting.

3 - No pretence.

(But no fighting please).

#316: Another World/Drive By/Nothing Will Be Done

A photograph of a rental scheme bike stood up and surrounded by bags filled with someone’s belongings.  Another collection of bags sits nearby surrounding a sleeping body. 

Everything is pictured underneath a flyover and next to a roundabout. Cars can be seen queued up and driving past - both behind, on a slip road, and to the side, on the roundabout itself.

#315: Living Seascape (Land's End)

A view of the ever-changing (and not always uniformly) seas around Land’s End livestreamed into a gallery onto a huge, and wide, screen in high definition.

#314: Living Landscape

A livestream of a landscape (looking across a valley, hills of different shapes beyond) shown on a large and wide screen in a gallery.  

#313: Is that all there is?

A blank canvas.

#312: What they think is real

Text reads: "We have to fight what isn’t real or true," above a gif of an animated puppet show showing the villains of the day.