that there’s so much wood in this year’s art.
today: with fog. that never cleared. all day long. and more to come. tomorrow and the day after. and possibly the day after that too.
weather that belongs to some woods and not others.
(of course without a camera at the opening)
in all of last weeks’ hectic, this got uploaded but never circulated. jason kavanagh and my collaboration now also in sound on the web and not just our floating installation with headphone.
in short bursts of reading while travelling from the atlantic to the north sea in rare sunshine and in less than an hour, here another blink:
” Rather, what happens in the autobiographical process is an interplay of positioning possible pasts and possible beginnings in the light of an end, that is the present of the story at the time, and in the context of its telling.” (ibid, p. 55)
as well as a little methodological difficulty to ponder, with Kierkegard:
“It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition that it must be lived forwards. And if one thinks over that proposition it becomes more and more evident that life can nevery really be understood in time simply because at no particular moment can I find the necessary resting place from which to understand it–backwards.” (ibid., p. 51f)
… a conversation that begun a few years back just recently took some unexpected turns. they were circular in fact and as that rather delicious. they are marked, if not fully formed in these few lines that were contained in written text. thanks so much, lb, and looking forward to what this may turn to in a future that is talked of in the present. as shared vorfreuding, how else?
“There is no telling of a sequence of life events in a linear order that does not presuppose a view in hindsight. Remember, this story is about past events but told in the present. That is, it is about a reconfiguration of the past in an act of retrospection which first of all aligns a view in the here and now. The story can only be told because both its beginning and end are already known…
The plot of a life narrative, even though it mostly deals with the past, always emerges as an order of the present.”
(Brockmeyer, Autobiographical Time, Narrative Enquiry, 10, pp 51-73, p 63)
… of course would have always also been homemade cake. today’s is apple cake. and once it is baked, i realise that i am not on my own. it’s a belated birthday cake, so it seems, and my granny has dropped by.
cakes are firm family affairs. with family recipes. but thinking about it. most of them are indeed my mother’s. hers was the baking domain. both grannies of mine, while also baking, have only few of the cakes associated with them. the cheesecake and the kolutschen are my mother’s mother’s. and anni’s? off the top of my head i can’t think of any other than philly cake (never recreated in well over two decades, yet, my dad talked of it in september).
many of the cakes i bake now are mine, or indeed l and mine, appropriated and developed in experimentation.
the serving plate is anni’s. and it’s an apple cake, thus also firmly family-located. yet, the recipe doesn’t come from any of the women in my family but indeed my first baking book. there’s cream, but it’s poured rather than whipped (deviate once), there’s tea (deviate twice, surprisingly) but there’s small cake forks rather than ubiquitous spoons.
thus, in relocation of family affairs they are modified, translated (the unavailability of good quark had a lot to answer for a lack of cheese cakes over the first 10 years, i can assure you) and re-appropriated.
this is of course an opening. to year two of art education. it’s the long-awaited, books-already-stashed (need to order frida kahlo now), chapter on subjectivities from now on.
the show is opened. another set of walls look back at me, little art therapy this time round but with nature translations and assorted other. there is little landscape left and i’m glad that that desire went to plan. so: now onto person-making. and as anni’s ghostly visit on this quiet, rainy afternoon reaffirms: my hunch to start with some reflections turning not quite into self portraits from some 80 years ago looks also set.
in addition, the chapter may also feature invitations to friend’s to bring their grandparents along for a sunday afternoon coffee chat. i wonder what cakes and subjectivities may surface. happy late, what would have been 97th, birthday!
ps: an absence just got noticed. the men in all this!? cake-eaters, to be fed, approvers of cake, desirers of cake. that only changes in my generation with my brother and l also being cakemakers.
exhibition extended until 30 november!
c | fieldwork
tom bush | gesa helms
Colour and field mark significant and deliberate elements of both our work. How this work is developed, constituted and inquired upon could however hardly be different.
We explored the crossings between the ‘origins’ – German classical modernism and the Romantics’ hunt for the sublime. We also played with the generational tendencies therein. Letting two bodies of work – acrylics, oil, printmaking and drawing – explore these tendencies and approaches not only side by side but in dialogue with each other is our aim with this exhibition.
The work put forward for exhibition is a body of work of about 25 pieces, created between 2008 and 2011. Many of these develop in series – Tom’s 20×20 cm explorations of the possibilities of colour in 25 squares and their atonal visual melody as mathematical play, or Gesa’s Fieldworks that originate from plein air sketches from Northern Germany and elsewhere and develop in printmaking and drawing.
Gesa’s practice of fieldwork – the collecting of information and how this is explored through research and experiment into expressive marks on canvas and paper seems to provide the antipode to Tom’s imagining of colour allusions and illusions that are, then, with plenty of tape and acrylic paint put on board. Yet, common in both our approaches is the interest to enquire about our perception of colour and field. In common is also an exploration of expression and an acknowledgement of its ambiguity.
