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Straight from the horse's ass (Part 3)

The as yet untitled work about the duality of power is now complete. These photographs of sheet five (taken over a period of five or six hours- click to enlarge) show my method, which in itself was entirely driven by rules; firstly dividing the shadows into blocks and then layering them up like a screenprint. Again, here we can see how the reverse side of the piece shows through the masked, negative spaces of the other.

The statue depicted here is of Emanuele Filiberto, ‘Testa di Ferro’ in Piazza San Carlo, Turin. A character of considerable fame from sixteenth century Italy, namely because he made Italian the official Savoy language instead of Latin and moved what became the Turin Shroud to the city cathedral. He is also known however, as being a ruthless strategist and exploited any weaknesses for his own ends. My inclusion of him in this project reflects the unavoidable problems related to how powerful people have to present themselves. What are they hiding? What don’t we know? Such ‘PR’ battles and embarrassing ‘reveals’ dominate our news feeds these days but monuments like this one have a wonderfully bombastic way of ignoring everything but heroism- so much so that you get drawn into the romance of it before anything else.

I think the work has been a success; power is portrayed in a graphic sense but it’s also abstracted due to the complimentary colour scheme. Failures would lie in the difficulties I had in finding a workable technique and sometimes losing touch with the concept as a result. Above all, the work has been an intriguing one in terms of using painting to ask sculptural questions.

Coming up in part four:

Title

Once an appropriate venue presents itself, the five pieces will be mounted and placed together in a sequence/installation yet to be determined.

Straight from the horse's ass (Part 1)

The history of the horse and its consequent relationship to us has culminated in a complex symbol that has allowed us to produce a plethora of artistic interpretations. Horses make us think of strength, richness and perfection. Pictorially, they hold a place in art history as powerful representations of status. Even in common phrases and jargon: ‘the width of a horse’s ass’, ‘wins by a nose’ or indeed, ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’.

Along with ‘get off your high horse’ and ‘hold your horses’, they form the crux of what this piece is about. Relatively speaking, the preconceived ideas that we have about power have been interesting to investigate and transform into something visually.

Torino has had a particular role to play in the formation of what we now know as the Italian state: French occupation, the Savoia dynasty and the Risorgimento, things which are clearly in evidence by what we see in the streets and piazzas. The monuments therefore are vital for this idea of power and what it means to our urban environment.

When they were designed the idea was to immortalise people as national heroes using idealism, romance and the horse’s symbolic potency. However, such beautiful forms got me thinking about how they reflect on our current society? We still have leaders and important people but they are (and will be) presented completely differently. Politicians are eager to be seen as approachable, honest and thoughtful but we ironically know more about them and their flaws these days than say, Testa de Ferro or Ferdinand D’Savoia - but they are still public figures none the less and still have the same ambition and ruthlessness as those cast in bronze. The question is how much do current leaders wish to be seen or are seen as such?

The conception of the work and the representation of the two-faced nature of elitism and modern politics both came from this.

It struck me as interesting that (considering the perfect forms in front of me) that there are two different viewpoints from which any ‘immortal on horseback’ cannot not be seen and identified; from up the horse’s nose and from up its ass. The careful consideration of the sculptor and his workshop to convey the hero is lost with each example. Funnily enough all you are confronted with is either a strain of neck muscles or a pair of giant testicles.

I found this to be ideal territory for the new work, representative of the high society figure as a joke who can never fully achieve power because our society has become disinterested and hypercritical.

More to come in the next post on December 13

From beginning to end

Whenever you watch the news, a newsreader hands over to some sort of correspondent. Invariably, that correspondent is twinned with a map of where they happen to be reporting from. Given the rolling nature of news these days, it came to my attention that certain geographic shapes have become loaded with certain connotations. You see North Korea… what’s he up to now? Afghanistan…when will this end?? Myanmar…how many forced out today? You can begin to predict the story before the reporter opens their mouth. In terms of the Western media, each disaster zone has one pressing matter and it comes and goes as time progresses.

“States of Affairs” is about how these said places fall in and out of ‘newsworthy consciousness’ but are in many ways, interconnected.

The gallery refers to the moment I thought of it (when the Russian annexation of Crimea was mentioned again) to the finished piece. I thought that it would be interesting to show the evidence of progression, given that this piece is essentially about time.

Predictable monumentalism

Recent indecision and the seemingly unending problems regarding Brexit has given me the impression that the EU's days are most certainly numbered. The "Monument to the European Union" is a political work that represents my prediction of the future; that the EU will no longer exist and, at some point, architects will be invited to immortalize what it stood for. I have taken my cues from seeing other proposals for Public works in their documentative form. Photographs, sketches, written explanations etc. The successful proposals exist somewhere in the real world and have become part of the urban population's everyday experience. The failures on the other hand, rejected for whatever reason, give off the feeling of what could been, the possible alternative or if 'the grass is greener'. I have found this notion to be systematic of how many feel about Brexit and especially the contemporary opinion on the subject of nationalism.

The sculpture itself is a collection of twenty five plaster casts. Each being a representation of a motorway junction in and around Bruxelles. These stand for the very literal confusion and the list of potential outcomes that we now find ourselves in. In addition, by experimenting with the scale and digitally rendering a model into a realistic image, the question of how 'monumental' or 'substantial' it is comes to the fore.

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