19.12.2023
NB: This is a personal interpretation and is not endorsed by the organisation.
In recent years, the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College – ‘the Sistine Chapel of England’ – has become a contemporary art gallery in a fusion of new and old. Juxtaposed against the beautiful paintings on the walls and ceilings influenced by the classical tradition – artwork which is about 300 years old – we have had art in other, more contemporary media such as enormous three dimensional models done to the scale of the earth and the moon. Each time, the installation fits and expands the themes on the ceilings. So for the appearance of the moon, the Painted Hall had already figured astronomy on the ceiling, including a representation of the moon in the figure of Diana or Artemis with the crescent in her hair. There was an interesting comparison between scientific advances, the relative merits of photography and painting, the mythological depiction of celestial bodies and the accurate topography of the surface of the moon from a ‘literalist’ point of view.
The newest art installation is ‘Coalescence’ by Paul Cocksedge (supported by Carpenters Workshop Gallery) since, in one detail, the ceiling depicts a figure pouring a sack of coal into a bowl made out of gold. Historically, the Painted Hall derived some funding from the coal tax too as a component of the Royal Hospital for Seamen, the immense and royally sponsored charity of its time. The one ‘naval pensioner’ that we know is depicted on the ceiling – John Worley – also appears to have worked in the coal industry (which perhaps dirtied the soul of this rogue since he figures in the records of the Hospital for Seamen as a master of profanity, drunkenness and unlawful wenching since he is said to have smuggled women into the exclusively male space of the architecture by Christopher Wren).
Trumpeted as questioning ‘our relationship with, and dependence on, fossil fuels’, Coalescence is a construction in a type of coal called ‘anthracite’ which shines brightly in the light (I asked a Greek woman if it was a Greek word and she told me that I pronounced it incorrectly in a typically English way in a complete laceration and ruination of the Greek tongue. However, after that, I was informed that ‘anthracite’ literally just means ‘coal’ in Greek). Here is what is touted as the absolute point of Coalescence:
‘A single 200W light bulb, turned on for a year, would consume over half a tonne of coal – Coalescence represents that same amount. This sculpture is made up of 2, 500 pieces of anthracite, which is a form of high carbon coal that has a lustrous quality when illuminated’.
As the artist says ‘It’s easy to forget the origins of the energy that’s required in almost every aspect of our lives’.
Coalescence is exhibited alongside 20 Trees, also in anthracite. The point that is made is that if this sculpture were to be burned, ‘it would take 20 trees an entire year to offset the carbon emissions produced’.
How do we analyse these artworks? We are told that they are a blend of ‘mathematics with environmental awareness’. As mathematics, they lack the important quality of precision. For example, 20 Trees demands more details. What type of trees? How tall? How old are the trees? What exactly is the equation that we are talking about?
But let us not be pedantic. What the artworks do is to make the abstract and incomprehensible realm of mathematics and figures (for some) become concrete and visible. So we can see just how many objects it takes to produce the energy that we can consume mindlessly. We can see the resources that we are using up. In short, we are substituting the real for the notional and therefore understanding the effect that we have on the planet and the carbon that is locked up in things like coal. It is the nakedness of the numbers that we are seeing and that hit our eyes. When I was younger, my history teacher (the most boring teacher in the world, a great feat in a grammar school full of the most boring teachers I have ever encountered) told me that it was literally unimaginable how many people died in the World Wars. The human mind is not capable of envisioning that many bodies with personalities of their own. So the value of Coalescence is that it allows us to literally see what is destroyed for us and our energy needs, how we are destroying the planet and its treasures. The coal is literally burnt and destroyed to become pollution and dirt. It is absolute destruction.
Let us reflect on the fact that we are looking at coal illuminated by light in Coalescence. The art exhibit is about light. It is equating itself to the light emitted by a light bulb. The coal itself becomes filled with light. Is this a glorification and transfiguration of the material world which becomes filled with illumination – what has traditionally been linked in the Western tradition to spiritual rapture and enlightenment, heaven and truth? Or is there a problematic ambiguity? Is this, despite itself, a celebration of the fossil fuels that we are trying to escape from but which are necessary to the conditions of an advanced, industrial, mechanised, captialist society? If Coalescence is an artefact of light which reflects on the transmission of light – which in many ways equates coal to diamonds that capture light – what is this saying about the value of light, its communication, its manipulation, its use? Light makes the show. We can’t see without light. But what if light is being used to talk about light itself and its construction? Surely this is the postmodernist twist, the meta-level: the exposure of processes, manufacture. The transparency of the making.
Let us reflect on the context of Coalescence in the Painted Hall. The Painted Hall is a piece of propaganda. Beautiful propaganda, but propaganda nonetheless. The paintings are a celebration of British power and the power of the monarchy. So, the fact that we have an exposure of the mechanics of power in the form of Coalescence – what it physically and realistically takes to create power – takes on a new connotation in the space. Intentionally or unintentionally – let us not forget the power of the unconscious – we are being made to compare and contrast the situation from 300 years ago to the one today but also to reflect on the exposures of the situation of power today. The Painted Hall is, in a sense, ‘powered’ by coal since it derives its funding from the Coal Tax. There is this idea that the fossil fuel economy is in the past which is – as we all know if we read our novels – a foreign country. And that power of the time was linked to colonialism, the slave trade, to all those exploitative economies which fuelled modern Western development. The fossil fuel economy today is politically and socially powered by exploitative economies which rape the earth through mining, which unfairly martial resources for developed countries at the expense of the developing in the main strategy to keep them developing and to keep them subservient. The artist is a very political man. I have met him. On the very first meeting, he started talking to me about politics. I don’t think it is unintentional that the installation is about power and that he wanted it to be exhibited in the Painted Hall. Unintentionally or intentionally, location determines the meaning of a work. There is an exposure of the old evils of power and its mechanics which continue into the present moment, poisoning the earth and making it unlivable, barren, arid, sterile.
Lastly, let us reflect on the name. Coalescence means ‘the process of coming or growing together to form one thing or a system’ (Cambridge Dictionary). On a literalist level, the artist has created art objects by lumping coal together. Obviously. However, there is more of a meaning if we consider the intention of the work. Surely, the artist is inviting the public and society to come together to make a transformation of the coal into something else – something as pure and luminous and beautiful like light. The artist is asking us to become the creators and the people of light. To become separated from the dirtiness of coal – for surely, who expects coal to glow like it does in the exhibition before they come to the Painted Hall? There is a drive to make us form a new society, a new revolutionary society. To bring the people together into a greater whole against the rich that control resources in the world.
What is my overall opinion of Coalescence? It looks beautiful and spectacular, much more so than I expected. It is thought provoking and sophisticated, not what I expected at all. It does capture something of the essence of light – it is illuminating. The artwork has substance and it has an appealing charm to it. The question is, however, is the art fit for purpose? Can you make beauty into a stone and fling it into the face of this wretched world and its mechanisms of power – its control by the rich in the service of the exploitation of the world and all that are in it? Will the people – who never understand anything – that misunderstand everything – even make the first move towards appreciating the work? The attempt has to be applauded. The spirit has to be applauded. The real artist is a revolutionary. As the Hindi song title says we must have ‘Sarfaroshi ke tamana’ – the desire to have the revolutionary spirit. Without that, art is meaningless in a corrupt world. Because art is either the resistance, or it is not art. It would be propaganda for arrogance, insolence, sin and exploitation. As we reflect on the differing beauties in the Painted Hall – beauty without a conscience, beauty with a conscience – as we ponder on the unthinking and selfish and inconsiderate atrocities of the past and the atrocities of the present, what conclusion can we really come to? At the very least, there has to be the attempt at justice. At the very least, there had to be the attempt to crawl out of the gutter towards the stars and the light. At the very least, there has to be something said about what is happening, what is hidden, what we don’t want to know and feel. At the very least, some small, small ounce of ‘sarfaroshi ke tamana’ must be in the world. Otherwise, all you have is burning coal. And dirt that chokes.
diary of a lone man 