#178: Work Together (A Socialist Tapestry)

Flags hang from the gallery ceiling representing all activisms that fall, or should fall, on the political left.  All strands and points of view are represented.  The bottom end of each flag is frayed so that they carry on and dangle down.  These frayed ends are then knotted to the frayed ends of every other flag, connecting all to each other.

sailing under all flags

we should all be socialists

and raise each other up

we should all be everythingists

advocates for each other

for we face obstacles in common 

and can only beat them together

competition narrows and demeans

us, makes us more like them

undermining and exploding

holding on and pulling down

to live as fearlessly as a child

we must first dismantle 

the entire prison together 

sailing under all flags

we should all be everything

for to raise each other up

#177: The End of the Golden Period (and The Start of the Dialogue with The Past)

Oil on canvas.  

Word painting reading, 

< googles, “The Idea” >

Damn it, I thought I was being original.

#176: A place to stop and discuss the other works (but not this one)

Somewhere within your exhibition, preferably breaking up an otherwise solid wall of paintings, please leave a blank space from the floor to the ceiling of 2 metres titled in the catalogue as:

A place to stop and discuss the other works (but not this one).

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Unentered idea for the 2023 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the theme of which was “Only Connect,” taken from the famous quote in Howards End by E.M. Forster.

Click here for a background twitter thread.

#175: Connect us to love

Oil on canvas painting of someone sat at a desktop computer.

#174: After a visit to an art gallery (and a throwback to the beginnings)

Work of art whose meaning remains hidden from the viewer, such as B. a painting facing the wall or a statue covered with a cloth.

(Is something in a work of art lost over time or each time it is placed in a new place or context? Is there something to be gained? Do some works of art lose their meanings after their first exposure, and if so, will they ever be?  Are some just memories of an event, and so they ultimately lose their meaning and value when they leave that event, a provocation flattened and agitated by time, a moment gone?

And what happens when a work of art is seen but is invisible when not busy? What happens when visitors don't overlook it and have a bad idea? Does it matter? When someone looks and decides, when they walk by, sees it, decides, but doesn't really stop or doesn't read the label? Or if so much is not there? When it is difficult for the viewer, when the art is like a finger removed from the body, when far from its original context it is difficult to see what it means?)

I think.

#173: Choose your title: Peace and Quiet Diptych / Underwater Silence Diptych / Swimming Pool, or Bathtime, Silence / Escape /

Two paintings, oil on canvas.

1: Bird’s eye view of someone floating in an outside swimming pool, the water just up above their ears, staring up into the sky, miles away.

2: View from above of someone lying in the bath, the water just up above their ears, staring up at the ceiling, somewhere else.

#172: I just get in the sea

Oil on canvas.  A woman swimming in the sea as seen from the pebbly beach.

Underneath is the following text: 

“What I’ve learned, when my mental health is bad, I just get in the sea and I feel better.” - Angela Barnes.