Exhibition at Kew Gardens Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art
Running from April 12 to September 14, 2025
Review by Dr. Suneel Mehmi (first version of an exhibition review for Plantcurator.com)
Images courtesy of Kew Gardens.
What is a portrait of a tree? And what can such a portrait do? What can a tree portrait tell us about ourselves as humans and our systems of representing ourselves and nature? These are some of the questions behind the Finnish visual artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s exhibition ‘The Power of Trees’ at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens.
The Power of Trees. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The Power of Trees invites visitors to explore the enduring beauty of trees across art and culture.
A prominent – and spectacular – piece in the exhibition Ahtila’s Horizontal–Vaakasuora offers the living video portrait of a 30-metre-tall spruce in Finland’s boreal forest. The tree is shown as a sublime horizontal, subverting our intuitive perceptions of how to portray a tree and highlighting how the limitations of the film frame can shape understanding since the tree could not be captured as a great vertical but had to be rendered horizontally to capture its majesty.
Alongside the installation are Ahtila’s preparatory works, Anthropomorphic Exercises in Film, which are going to be seen for the first time in the country at Kew. Anthropomorphic Exercises in Film are a series of sketches which cast the trees as human characters in movie scenes. The conception is to foreground and analyse our human ways of seeing through film, one of the forms of representation that dominate our understanding of the world around us.
What I found to be an especially stimulating artwork is Point of View/With a Human. There is a step and in front of it, there are three sections on the tree. The fourth section at the top is a mirror in which we look into. Is this artwork a ladder of the tree into the self? The tree as a spiritual guide for the recognition of the self? Or (even at the same time), a puncturing of human arrogance as you step to look at your face in the top branches of the tree? An insight that our sight and our vision of nature is based on narcissism and ego? That we can we only see ourselves in nature? Nature as ourselves?
Finnish art has traditionally been preoccupied with fragments rather than wholes as we learn from the exhibition curatorial note. What is the artwork saying about human beings as a fragment of nature, as part of nature’s collection of fragments? The fragmented self of human beings in the world of nature?
I found Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s exhibition “The Power of Trees” to be a very well conceptualised thought experiment into how we represent the outside world of nature, but also how we represent the inner world of ourselves through filmic representations. How a portrait and character is built. It is an art of the tree that allows us to know ourselves and the limitations and fabrications of our self-knowledge. The exhibition is playful, earnest, important and stimulating and worth not just one, but repeated visits to tease out its subtlety. After you see it, when you look next at at tree in art, you will definitely look at it differently. And perhaps at yourself too.
NB: For non-commercial public discussion of the artwork as an independent researcher and volunteer, quotations from sources are intended as ‘fair use’. My interpretations are to be freely shared but to be used with credit as my intellectual property. My interpretations do not reflect any consensus or any other person at any of the places that I work or volunteer. They are my own views.
Summary and Ways of Introducing the Themes of the Exhibition
Horizontal–Vaakasuora offers an awe-inspiring portrayal of a 30-metre-tall spruce in Finland’s boreal forest. Complete with the sounds of a creaking trunk and birdsong, this living portrait captures the majesty of this ancient tree while challenging our perceptions of the natural world.
Accompanying the installation are Ahtila’s preparatory works, Anthropomorphic Exercises in Film, making their UK debut at Kew.
(Kew website)
Global warming inspired her to move from making human dramas to portraits of the trees: ‘Changes in the environment and nature’ (Note: the whole exhibition is about change and transformation – nature changing into the human – as global warming makes the human change into nature. It is an environmental reversal. In Creating Character/With Rain, this is emphasised since ‘the trees are gradually transformed into anthromorphic figures using small deliberate changes’ (exhibition curation label). In the last still frame, the character appears to hold a small gun – she is transforming the tree into a violent character and a killer – a reversal of roles since we are the killers of the trees. In Action: Stumble – the tree falls over like it is dead – the trees are facing extinction.)
The installations included in Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Ecologies of Drama traced a central question posed throughout her work: how have drama and narrative historically been constructed, and how might we envision their new forms?
Many of Ahtila’s most recent works, including Studies on the Ecology of Drama 1, directly investigate how humans could move away from an anthropocentric perspective and suggest that our narratives about the world around us may be powerful tools in that effort.
“How to depict living things? How to approach them? How to convey a different way of being, another being’s world? How to make it into a continuous event that becomes part of our idea of reality?”
Most video works by Finnish visual artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila take place on multiple screens, producing different vantage points of a story simultaneously. She intentionally floods or overwhelms the viewer’s senses in order to produce a strong emotional impact. Instead of following the traditional moving image script, Ahtila explores and innovates on modes of presenting a state of mind or other condition.
Interview with the Artist: Relevant Quotes with Notes
I am questioning what can be done with moving image, and what characterizes this specific medium (Note: the focus is on exploring film through the trees, not the trees through the film, perhaps. Although there is, of course, both).
Moving image also presents itself as the language of our global culture (Note: Film is described as a language – an analysis of language is the foundation – see notes below on Horizontal. It is interesting therefore, the piece where the trees are conversing in the film stills – Conversation Edit 1. It is almost as though she is saying that the trees have their own language. See Horizontal again – she says the tree is breathing and is therefore linked to language – the trees are seen as actors with lines and this may reflect that she is trying to show us the hidden language of the trees, some awareness of the recent scientific suppositions that trees have a language. Conversation Edit 1 is splitting up and bringing together the two trees in conversation – about the connection and disconnection that language imposes, the difference between a dialogue and a monologue. In the last shot, when we confront the tree, is there an implication of the language between humans and the tree and the language of film? Are we talking to the tree and it is talking to us? The language in the piece is entirely invisible in each scene – it is the table that gives the indication that the conversation is happening, so it is not implausible to think that we are talking to the tree and the tree to us).
The moving image has become the most popular means of representing our surroundings and society. It has become our central medium of presenting the world. But to the same degree the medium shows the world to us, it hides other parts. A specific perspective and a particular version of looking at the world are imposed. It is inevitable to ask: Who should be allowed to perform in this image of our world that we create? Who can be a protagonist? To whom/what do we grant the status of an actor? (Note – She is questioning why we humans should be the actors and our particular vision of the world should be imposed).
How do we picture the world around us? And on a bigger scale, how do we picture this planet? (The idea of getting an overall picture that emerges from the fragments – look at the composition of Horizontal as the distinct parts become a greater whole).
What is your dramaturgic intention behind a multiple-screen setting? To play with the linear perspective and the order it implies – and the viewers’ omnipotence. I’m aiming at creating a cinematic space in which screens interact with each other, making use of the space between the screens, in which the viewers are situated. The viewer enters a state in which she or he is never able to see everything at the same time as things occur in the room. It changes their position as privileged viewers. There are several ways of seeing, not one defined path or angle from which to look at the action. The setting denies a singular perspective of things, or a specific order of how knowledge is acquired. It also emphasizes the fact that we have to make choices about how we want to look at certain things. (Note – the puncture of the illusion of human omnipotence and human ego in their perspectives as a result).
In “Horizontal” you created a film portrait of a spruce tree, in six different parts. What led you to the idea and what message were you trying to convey? The work originated in the shooting of The Annunciation, from 2010. In its production we needed to shoot first landscapes and then trees. When we confronted the task of shooting a tall tree, we were faced with many restrictions – first with the camera, and then with the idea of a picture of a tree. With the film camera and its aspect ratio one can only capture a part of a tree. When backing off, it becomes no longer a portrait of a single spruce, but the picture of a landscape. Using a wide-angle lens produces a distortion effect, which no longer results in an image of the spruce, but in an account of the mechanism of optics.
In 2011, I made the drawing series entitled Anthropomorphic Exercises on Film based on this observation and the limitations the camera mechanism poses for visual recording of our surroundings. Then I thought I might as well take the challenge seriously and make a moving image piece of the attempt to make a portrait of a tree. It is a long story, but to make it short: We shot a 30 meter tall spruce in six parts and presented it in a human space, horizontally, since otherwise it would not have fit inside. That’s how the name Horizontal originated. The more we got immersed in this task, working with technical equipment, that has been made as an extension to human perception, the more we ended up seeing ourselves and the mechanisms of both the machine and the idea.
Research Notes (Secondary Reading and my Ideas about them)
She has often probed individual identity and the boundaries of the subject in relation to the external world.
(Note: In this exhibition, she is probing the boundaries of the subject through the limitations imposed by their vision and human perspective).
Using the visual language of cinema, Ahtila presents large-scale installations with split-screen projections on multiple panels. These viewing conditions, with their simultaneously charged vantage points, break the idea of cinematic perspective and construct an experience of several co-existing times and spaces for being.
(Note: is the tree video in sections a collection of different times and spaces for the being of the tree? What about the overall unity which connects these different sections? They have a screen continuity if not a physical and temporal continunity. The theory of the gestalt, perhaps the suggestion that we falsely experience the whole even though the parts radically differ from each other, as in the construction of the tree where we don’t scrutinise the great difference in different branches and leaves, etc.? )
In her earlier works, she dealt with the topic of unsettling human dramas at the center of personal relationships…
Although Ahtila’s films do include more than one character, they tend to focus on the internal experience of just one person. Her work seems to be more about studying and understanding an individual’s subjective experience, and how the influences around individuals shape who they are and what they do, and shape their unconscious selves. She is greatly interested in the factors that go into the construction of personal identity, and in how fluid that construct can be.
(Notes – then the portraits of trees are standing in for the psychological selves of nature from that early interest in portraying humans. Are they studies of our our psychology through the trees, how the trees influence our personalities? Yes, because they show the trees adopting human traits – when we look in the mirror of Point of View/With a Human, we literally put our personality into the tree since we look at ourself as a personality. Finland is known as being the happiest country in the world and this is precisely because of the connection of the Finnish to nature and the trees – in other words, the trees have built the national psyche).
HORIZONTAL is a six-channel moving portrait of a living spruce tree. The attempt to film a spruce tree brings the portrayer face to face with the technical apparatus constructed as an extension of the human eye and perception. It also invites us to consider the preconditions of anthropocentric dramaturgy and the valuations it engenders in images and in the order of representation. It is a record of its existence as a living organism, or perhaps more to the point, a presentation of the difficulty of perceiving and recording a spruce tree with the methods of visual documentation invented by humans.
– The tree is projected onto a rectangular wall, a human structure.
– She is a former professor at the Department of Time and Space-based Art at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (Finland). She breaks up the tree into conceptual packets of space and time through the filming – the conceptual analysis of the tree through the fields of space/time. Is there a link with Einstein’s view of the universe as a space/time continuum and of discrete space time fields? Is this a cosmological vision of the tree?
– The Finnish word ‘kuusi’ means the number six and ‘spruce’ – the tree is in six sections. Lingual play exploring the multidimensionality of words and their many different meanings in the video installation which suggests that the multidimensionality of the tree is evolving from an idea of the multiplicity of meanings within words and signs. They shot when it was windy – wind as breath possibly, and the link to language. She says in the video: the tree is moving and it is ‘breathing’ which would add evidence for this interpretation. (‘Through her cinematic work, she studies the structure of images and language’ – https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/eija-liisa-ahtila/ )
– ‘All these facts are comforting and calming’ – the movement in the high wind gives calm and repose – this is what the Finnish answer to being the happiest nation is supposed to be. That whatever life throws at you, there is calm and repose in nature.
Point of View/With a Human
– Is it a ladder of the tree into the self? The tree as a spiritual guide for the recognition of the self?
– Or (even at the same time), a puncturing of human arrogance as you step to look at your face in the top branches of the tree? That our sight and our vision of nature is based on narcissism and ego? Can we only see ourselves in nature? Nature as ourselves?
– The fragments: Finnish art has traditionally been preoccupied with fragments rather than wholes (exhibition curatorial note). What is it saying about human beings as a fragment of nature, as part of nature’s collection of fragments? The fragmented self of human beings in the world of nature?
– In the mirror, we are moving. We are not completely still and this is impossible. Again, this is about the moving image. Whereas the artwork of the tree is completely still and calm – a comment about the different states of being, the different time register’s between the tree’s slow movements and our own movements? If so, there is an ambiguity – because we appear to be still in the mirror. So there is an illusion of human stillness amidst the stillness of the tree, a false mirroring of nature from the human. In fact, we merge in the mirror with the tree. It is a moment of connection of a sort, but a connection that is dictated by our human frames of time (the mistaken assumption that we can ever be completely still).
– The arbitrariness of vision: Some are too tall to look in the mirror, some too short. There is an arbitrary vision of the human at the top of the tree which is not even accessible to all – is this a comment about the politics of cinema and the moving image? The rigidity and inaccessibility of the moving image?
Themes
Fragments – Finnish artists focused on fragments of nature. The frames of a video are fragments that build up into a larger whole that moves like the moving image – this relies on a trickery of sight since we can only see a certain number of frames per second. Our vision is based on illusion as well as our impression and understanding of the greater whole, such as our impression of the planet Earth and the way we see its nature.
Portraits – what are portraits showing? Why do they show what they show? Action portraits of the trees as they move in human gestures – what it means to make the trees protagonists of the action. In Point of View/With a Human, the human portrait we actually make ourselves through our reflection in the mirror – we are active constructors of these portraits of ourselves in nature. The point is that the portrait is not ‘real’ in any sense – it is merged fictitiously with the tree. Our portraits are determined by context and influence with nature.
The Inhuman and the Just: If the trees are portraits, they have no discernible gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age, etc. They are purely green. In Horizontal, this is a glaring comparison between the human figure that provides the scale as this person has an obvious gender and ethnicity and age. In these images that represent the moving image, we are seeing the representation of an inhuman and impossibly just world which destroys our vision and its discrimination. So, the portraits actually show something that resists the limitations of human vision. If the whole exhibition is a criticism of human vision and its limitations, then there is an optimistic message about what we could achieve if we transcended those limitations.
Criticism of her Project
But a question remains, glaring, refusing to be dismissed: who cares about the human-centered perspective of the traditional cinematic apparatus? Why devote this energy to dismantling an anachronism? It’s like mounting a critique against the normalizing effects upon intellectual production of the codex book format. Surely intellectuals have worse things to worry about. The question has serious ramifications. The mainstream model of narrative film certainly remains in force, arguably more powerful than ever. But its dispersal across a plethora of screens and formats, and its integration in multiple interfaces and consumer technologies, in a way has already transcended the limits of human perception. This pervasive decentralization of the apparatus for mediating audiovisual commodities belongs to the wider process of colonizing and redeveloping the human lifeworld, creating ever new domains of exploitation and accumulation. The ultimate product of this process is a new mode of subjectivity, a form of life whose conditions are not determined according to the physical needs of the human species, but established by the demands of deregulated, globalized capital.
Review by Dr. Suneel Mehmi. Images courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery with permission granted to reuse. This is an unpublished first draft for the Plant Curator website – https://plantcurator.com/
An inspiration for the ages and a fount of creativity, flowers have been the originating force, subject and detail of the masterpieces of all cultures. A colossus of endeavour and love, the flower exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery celebrates the contribution – and the omnipresence – of these unparalleled objects of beauty up to and including the present moment. The achievement? To have made a discriminating incision into the ubiquity of the flower in art so that the satisfactory slice can be served up – and digested.
Ranging across two floors which house large-scale installations, technically innovative videography, paintings, graphic design, textiles and photography, over 500 unique artworks and objects form the display. Organisation across this wealth of material is found in nine sections which deal with topics such as fashion, books and film, and representations of the flowers in the work of emerging contemporary artists.
In one room, we find the bespoke installation piece by Rebecca Louise Law, made up of over 100,000 dried flowers that have been salvaged from the wasteful society. A creation of sublimity from rejection which can be viewed from the floor or from above in the balcony. Another space has been transformed into an innovative and interactive digital projection by French artist Miguel Chevalier where we move the flowers and, in turn, they move us. A virtual garden of the imagination.
There is a mixture of justifiably perennial sources of delight such as Boticelli’s Primavera and the designs of William Morris alongside the unknown and uncontemplated work of others around the globe. Highlights include the 3D bronze sculpture of Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ by Rob and Nick Carter, where the viewing experience of the artwork is renewed (and given another dimension, if the pun is forgiven), Anna Von Freyburg’s gloriously coloured textile interpretation of a Dutch still life painting, Vivienne Westwood’s sensational floral costumes and Ann Carrington’s collection of finds in silver and cutlery for her shining and awe inpiring sculptures of remodification and metamorphosis.
What the exhibition succeeds in doing well is to sting the monkey of the mind so that she flickers across the branches of the canopy, forever at all moments looking for new paths of exploration and into new thoughts. There is so much beauty, so much food for thought.
What struck me in particular was the constant oscillation and the influence of the flower on the female body and the female body on the flowers. And how this dynamic has been woven into art and culture. Women have been understood as flowers, however we may interpret that equation. The exhibition suggests that works such as Mucha’s ‘La Rose’ give the woman flower the aura of power, the transcendence of a domestic role. In Gary Hume’s ‘Two Blooms, Grey Fields’, we are advised to see human faces in the flowers, a coupling of minds.
Another theme that emerged was the relationship between violence and the flowers. Sometimes, ‘flower power’ was an antidote to the oppressive state and the military as we see in photographs, such as Bernie Boston’s image of George Harris sticking carnations into gun barrels during the demonstrations against the Vietnamese war in 1967. In Wole Lagunju’s reinterpretation of the violence of ‘Judith with the Head of Holofernes’, we see flowers from the cultural iconography of the Yoruba which invigorates a postcolonial approach to real history.
As with all subjects of art, it was interesting to see the pull between the abstract representations of flowers, such as Damien Hirst’s ‘Valium’ and the figurative brilliances of art such as Janet Pulcho’s ‘The Dream of Love’ which was painted last year.
To end the exhibition on emerging voices was infinitely pleasing. A demonstration that the fascination with the flower and its beauty drives contemporary art and will be the future for art for time to come.
Immensely enjoyable and productive for a creative mind, ‘Flowers’ at the Saatchi Gallery is a big and delicious fish to have caught and to feast upon. I spent three hours in each of the spaces hoovering everything up. Beautiful variety, stylish presentation of the pieces, the experience was like an entry in the kaleidoscope of the senses. I learnt much, I contemplated much, I hungered much for the beauty of some of the pieces. My overall impression was of a shining, irresistibly coloured flower which emerges from the dark to cast its wonder upon a world of hearts.
An attempt to overcome the simplistic, exoticised and orientalised view of the Silk Roads, which created a first globalised economy and world, the Silk Roads exhibition at the British Museum is an exciting, revisionary and thought-provoking array of objects and materials.
The story of the exhibition is told elegantly and clearly: that this is not just the story of one single road, but of many. That this is not just the story of silk. This is the epic story and journey of connections, countless. How the Silk roads influenced histories and cultures across the world as ideas spread and economic trade transformed into a cultural exchange of ideas. One beautiful example is the spread of Buddhism from India across the Silk Roads, the belief system that still shapes much of the world today. Another I hadn’t heard of was the Sogdian whirl which came to China, an example of how ideas and bodies were changed and charged through the interaction with diversity and difference.
The networks explored through the objects create an astonishing encompassing of craft, materials and locations, from Tang Chinese ceramics exports intended for ports in the Middle East to garnets from India found in Suffolk. And so, our mental networks of assumed histories are updated, surprised and stimulated.
Intriguing stories of the personalities of the Silk Roads are showcased in the exhibition. There is the English smuggler, Willibald and a Chinese princess of Legend who unfolded the secrets of producing silk to her new kingdom. There are many such enticing morsels throughout. The reality of silk as currency, and the tales of fabulous places, such as Tang China with its capital Chang’an. This was for a time the largest of the cities in the world, boasting a population of one million people.
The exhibition has diversity. For instance, it describes the foreign populations that mingled in Tang China’s cosmopolitan cities who are displayed as figurines from the time.
Treasures abound. Absolutely and astonishingly sublime, spectacular, sensational. Indian art, a whalebone casket. There was an amazing dagger and sheath decorated with gold, garnets and glass alongside a gold shoulder clasp with garnets and glass. So supremely beautiful and perfect. A wonderful decorated gold bowl from Romania featuring a griffin mauling a goat, deadly and dazzling. There are treasures from the Dunhuang ‘Library Cave’ which contained some 70,000 manuscripts, paintings, textiles and other objects.
Mysteries abound too, the temptation to delve and discover, to explore. The unknown meaning of the ‘comma-shaped’ jade ornament in the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago. Shipwrecks with cargoes of brilliant treasures, the mental journey as you imagine the crew’s connections and intentions, as you travel in thought with them through history.
Some favourites in the exhibition for me were the display showing how Sanskrit was read in Chinese, as my family comes from India and my middle name is in Sanskrit, and the display on how geometric designs were diffused throughout Islam. I also particularly enjoyed looking at the treasures salvaged from the shipwrecks. The gift of the sea and of discovery.
The exhibition has contemporary reference as it tells us as we exit, that the connections forged on the Silk Roads will continue to shape the present and the future.
Fabulous as a journey through space and time, the exhibition really enlivens history. And it serves as a useful corrective to the modern day assumption that in the old times the people were unenlightened, unadventurous, prejudiced and isolated. There is a pluralistic and nuanced feeling to the presentation, to its revisionist spirit and to its celebration of human diversity and cultural exchange. A beautiful story that is told with beautiful things and beautiful people. Amazing.
Synonymous with the figure of the great and suffering artist, for many, Vincent Van Gogh represents the quintessential meaning of modern art. ‘Poets and Lovers’ brings together his best loved paintings alongside ones that are rarely seen in public. His drawings are interspersed throughout.
Over just two years in the south of France at the end of the nineteenth century, Van Gogh’s fertile and versatile imagination created a revolution in style which married the wonder of the Japanese vision with all the spirituality and poetry of the West. The exhibition encompasses this transformative and influential, inspirational journey in Arles and Saint-Rémy as masterpieces such as ‘Sunflowers’ were painted and the artist explores – with all of his fevered intensity – the realms of poetry and love.
Van Gogh struggled with mental health issues during this time – the current psychological and spiritual crisis that is marring humanity in this moment and therefore of the utmost relevance and significance to us. The exhibition shows how he transcended suffering. And that it was because of this suffering that he became Van Gogh. The exhibition is a demonstration of the strength of the human and of our resilience, creativity and adaptation in the face of collapse and breakdown.
Portraits abound as do scenes of the garden, including the most revealing imaginative grounds of the asylum where Van Gogh was treated. Each picture shows how Van Gogh coupled poetry and romance with an inner vision of things external to create beauty and the vivid life we see in each of his swirls and pirouettes across the canvas to envisage anew nature and individuals.
Highlights of the exhibition include ‘Starry Night over the Rhône’ (1888, Musée d’Orsay), ‘The Yellow House’ (1888, Van Gogh Museum), as well as the National Gallery’s ‘Sunflowers’ (1888) and ‘Van Gogh’s Chair’ (1889).
This is the first major exhibition devoted to Van Gogh in the National Gallery’s rich history.
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Well researched and genuinely generous to the artist’s ouevre, the Van Gogh exhibition really is a delight for those that love his work and want to know more about his life and inspirations. What was particularly interesting for me was the devotion to the literary and artistic influences on the man as some of the most famous episodes of his existence unfolded: the friendship and arguments with Paul Gaugin and, notoriously, the episodes of mental illness. Van Gogh emerges as the devotee of romance novels, a dreamer and a romantic.
The selection of paintings work as an artistic map of Van Gogh’s journey and exploration of a new locale. He investigates the landscape creatively and with inspired fervour. He remakes the world into his own shape. We see how from a first infatuation, darker and darker elements of the landscape and the world crystallise in the works, the descent into mental difficulties.
As we walk around the many rooms of the exhibition, we mirror Van Gogh’s tracing of the territories around him that he claimed: and we claim that artistic map of the world ourselves, these two years of life amidst the countryside, the Yellow House and the asylum.
Love is a major theme of the exhibition, Van Gogh’s dream of love. The desire to belong to someone. The early landscapes are idealised worlds of love populated by couples, romance and poetry. Van Gogh repeatedly associated poetry with love. This love counterbalances with the cold institutionalisation of the asylum where, perhaps, love is impossible.
On the walls of the exhibition, we see morsels of Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo which explain and promote his work. The words allow us to see what his intentions were behind each of the works, the deep river of emotion behind every brush stroke, what was attempted as expression and idealisation. The powerful voice of the man and his humanity and feeling.
Profound, moving, inspirational. This is how I would describe the Van Gogh exhibition. A delight for the lovers of Van Gogh and also, a meditation on how place transforms personality and creativity and how personality and creativity transform place. The magical canvases and portals into the imagination and poetry of Van Gogh and humanity itself are on show here. Who could object or criticise this wonderful achievement?
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Suneel’s Notes
When I looked at the portrait of ‘The Lover (Portrait of Lieutenant Milliet)’, I was struck by the sadness of Van Gogh. The artist, all alone, dreaming of love, had looked upon Milliet with envy because of his success with women. Here was the artist, the dreamer, the creator of beauty, looking at what the women love: a man of the state. The man synonymous with the power of the state and its violence. A man of violence. I too looked at this figure in this uniform that was the object of female desire with sadness and resignation, remembering my own failures in love. And I shared the subversive vision of Van Gogh who had reversed the star and crescent which was the regimental emblem of Milliet’s infantry unit the Zouaves. A desire to change the desires of others. A desire to transform and subvert the symbols of the state. A criticism of love and its conservativism. A desire for revolution and change. A desire to reverse reality.
What after all is envy? The imaginative desire to transcend and to transform reality so that it is the self that is favoured instead of the other. You contemplate the fortune of the other and the love that the other receives through their privilege and their adherence to the status quo and you feel that you deserve the same no matter how different you are. Envy is not inferiority. Envy is the feeling of life and others not having been fair to you. If life is unfair, at least in the imagination you can be fair to yourself. Because you deserve love too. And if the only way to get love is to shake the foundations of the world, this can be done in art.
Against the man of violence, we protest love. Against the staring face of the state and its coercion and violence, we protest love. Against power, the powerless protest love. Sadly. Against the blue background of depression and the blue scars and bruises of the heart.
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The garden abounded in Van Gogh’s art. The beautiful garden. The dream to have a garden, to be in the garden, to tend the garden, to live a life in the garden away from the troubles of the world.
But the flowers? The flowers were little dots and dashes. What was of the magnificence and study was the sturdy tree. The trees dominated, swirled and danced in the flow of the artist’s brush and pen. Invigorating, powerful, the connection with nature, with healing. For many of the gardens were in the midst of mental suffering, in the asylum. Those trees were anchors which held the artist down to the world. Their patterns and their growth an inspiration to go on, to keep on finding beauty, to grow again.
And then, the sunflowers and the oleanders and irises. What Van Gogh could not give attention to in the garden, he gave attention to within the home. Away from the overpowering force of the garden and the outside world. Once more, he could concentrate. The meaning of the flowers became clear to me. The attention to beauty, to life. It could come back again from the assault of the senses that was the outside world.
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Van Gogh. An artist. A poet. A writter of letters.
But above all, a reader. A dweller of the imagination and of the city of beauty.
Many paintings and drawings inspired by novels. And the one that struck me the most in what he read and how he presented his reading was Zola’s The Sin of Abbe Mouret (La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret), about a priest that forgets about his vows of chastity.
For Van Gogh is a man consumed with the passion of love and the passion to love. And love is what he is not getting in his life or from his art.
And that one novel, of falling in love, of feeling the madness of love, of forgetting the self, destroying the self, falling completely, completely… This is the dream of love. The dream of the artist. The dream of the lover of beauty.
And when you have understood what that novel is and the role of nature and the flowers within it, including in the tragic ending, that is when you understand Van Gogh and his art as a whole.
I have loved Van Gogh’s art my whole life. The dancing, mesmerising swirls. The vivid colours, brighter and more intense than this drab life that we have to live. A man that dreams of absolute love, whose art is a plea for that absolute love. The absolute love which I give to Van Gogh. However different he is from me. However we may disagree on things. He is the poet and the lover. And in that, he is me.
Hunger for the stars. Hunger to be the stars. They shine above. We below, stranded in our narrowness, separated from the skies.
Most lunchtimes at work I go down to the National Maritime to see the stars and the skies in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year Exhibit. I have the name ‘Sun’ in my name. The star conveys my identity. The one of our low castes in the Mahabharata, the hero Karana, he was the son of the Sun god. The sun is me and us. And the sun belongs in the skies.
These photographs are going to be my friends for a year. New friends. The places that I travel to in the imagination. An introduction to my new friends.
Mission Espada is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and this view of the annular solar eclipse was taken there. The photographer was worried that the clouds would cover the shot but they got the shot of the “Ring of Fire” – the bright ring-like appearance of the sun which is not obscured by the moon.
I loved the rolling, spiralling clouds in the sky which framed rather than obscured the shot. Without them, there would not be the drama.
The story of Mission Espada is that it was a site of colonisation: a place where they converted Native Americans to Christianity. Having the building in the shot below the skies perhaps puts colonisation into perspective: there is a larger reality beyond imperialism, between the forcing of others to become white.
And it is here that the white clouds become whiteness itself: something that the sun with his union in the female moon penetrates and overcomes. The Sun with his Other. Union over the strategy of divide and rule, union over white supremacism. The cloud of whiteness and white supremacism is division, obfuscation, coercion, duress, injustice. The Sun with his Moon is Love. They blaze above. They reign through Love.
Nobody knows who has put these sculptures in Namibia. In this place of the mystery of art, the running man sculpture runs into the stars. The desire to run amidst the stars. The ultimate mission of humankind: to populate the stars. To bring life to the universe. The dream. The hope. To be a part of the universe.
The rocks of the ground contrast with the beauty of the lights in the skies. The humble matter that is the rocks and us. Us men of dirt. That aspire to the heavens. Ambition. The intrepid explorer. The desire to become better. What makes us human.
As the photographer contemplates the artwork, as photography contemplates art and her mystery, as the dreamer dreams, the eye of the mind awakens.
“I visited the northern beach of the small island of Medhufaru and couldn’t believe my eyes. The whole beach shone with engaging turquoise light, while the gems of the Southern Cross constellation – such as the Gum Nebula or Carina Nebula – appeared in the sky,” Petr recalls.
Water as the blue electric. Dazzling, mesmerising, scintillating. The energy of the water cascading in the folds of the eyes and the body. The unity of the sky with the water, spaces filled with light.
The photographer calls the water the blue lava. The eruption of the earth in synchronicity with the light of the heavens. The emergence from the deep underneath into vision and beauty. And this blue lava, he swims in it. The dream of the swimmer, to be immersed in this blue lava. The cold blue fire of eruption and light.
4. Cloud Parade
Gällivare, Norrbotten, Sápmi (formerly Lapland), Sweden, 17 December 2023
Polar stratospheric clouds (nacreous clouds). Achingly beautiful, drenched in colours. You look upon the beauty of the natural world and her patterns. Hoping for a beauty like that in your life.
We dream of the days of leisure when we can look up into the clouds and admire their beauty. We dream of the days when we have time for the moments of beauty in this life. We envy those who have the time for this beauty. For the beauty of the clouds. This fleeting beauty that, like love, does not stay anywhere, that never rests. That blows in the wind. And, puff. She is gone. They are gone. All is gone. The cloud disappears like youth, the one who turned away from us. That never even looked back.
A beautiful panorama, a beautiful cinematic scene. Bringing back the memories of walking in the mountains in communion with nature, the mother and the goddess. Bringing to the viewer the closeness to the skies that comes with being in the mountains. The connection with the universe, when you touch the face of the mother.
The warmth of the orange, the invitation. The pleasure. The diagonal across the sky – the sublime power of the universe and of nature. The terrain: the welcome to exploration, to connect with the vastness of being.
6. Heaven is Remote
Deadvlei/Sossusvlei, Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia, 22 and 23 March 2023
The arc of the milky way in these magical dead trees. Spectacular, mystical, resonant, spiritual.
Death is meeting light. It is almost a regeneration. The movement from death into another plane of being, as in the mysticism of religion. The portal into another state.
The blueness of the scene like mourning, like depression, like grief.
A capture of death. As death becomes light.
The hope after death. A light filled place.
Which I do not believe in.
7. Aurora Borealis Over Brighton Seafront by Michael Steven Harris
Taken in Brighton, East Sussex, UK, 1 November 2023
An amazing vision resplendent with neon lights. A vision which brings back beauty to the city, the beauty of the skies. The city where we shrink, where no one knows us, where we know no one. Where there are no connections and no light.
The three layers: water at the base, the city in the middle, the sky above. Each filled with beautiful colour and wonder, the wonder that you never really experience in the city when you are no longer young. The city as a dream of promise. The way you saw the city once. Once long ago.
Once, I went to Iceland. I was recovering from a long illness. It is a place of memory. A place of healing. A place of discovery, the rediscovery of the self.
The dragon, she is memory too. The memory of pain.
This photograph is like an artist’s vision. It looks like imaginative truth. But it is not imaginative truth. It is the truth of the lens. The truth of time and space. Perhaps a little processed. But the truth of the skies. An amazing sight, an amazing shot, an amazing conception. Perfect in every way. An example of the realness of photography as art. And the photographer as artist. An artist that paints with the palette of the real.
9. The Palette Of The Himalayas
Shigatse City, Xizang Province, China, 24 January 2023
Where the sun and the altostratus clouds act together to create a huge corona soaring above the roof of the world.
The multicoloured spectrum that is the splendour and power of the sun, the one that I identify with. In the Himalayas, the mountains where the land meets the sky, in Asia where my parents come from.
Light and colour. Colour and light. Floating in magnificence in the blue boat of the sky.
10. Crescent by Jinyuan Chen
Taken in Launceston, Tasmania, Australia, 16 October 2023
The moon is beauty in Indian culture. If a woman is beautiful, we say that she is a fragment of the moon. The moon herself is a beautiful woman.
And here, we have the beauty of the Chinese conception. The moon floating in the mists of the clouds, like a Chinese ink brush painting in greyscale. Poetic, evocative. Resonant with the mystery of the moon and the mystery of nature. The mystery of women, the mystery that men seek to uncover. We spend our lives in the attempt to discover the moon, to discover the woman. Are we ever successful?
11. Anatomy of a Habitable Planet by Sergio Díaz Ruiz
“This seemingly alien world is actually our endangered planet, Earth, as a distant civilization might study it,” explains Sergio.
“This image was created by mixing the 16 bands monitored by the GOES-18 weather satellite to encode landmasses, oceans and atmospheric features as different colours.”
At the end of the exhibition, there is this reminder, this distorted view of the earth, our home, our mother. Our mother is in trouble. She needs our protection. There is no Planet B.
For a moment, we dwell amongst the stars. For the rest of a lifetime, we dwell upon the earth.
There is an Indian song in the Hindi film ‘Flying Jatt’, where the Sikh flies in the skies, like I fly in the skies in the National Maritime Museum. A film about protecting Mother Earth and the environment. The Sikh only bows his head for three places:
Ek maa ke charno mein – One in the feet of his mother
Ek mitti ki shaan mein – One in the splendour of (his) earth
Ek rabb ji di dvaari – One in the court of God.
….
The Museum website where you can see all the images:
An introduction to some of the accomplished artists and their work at the Garrison Chapel Degree Show 2024 – The King’s foundation school of traditional arts.
‘… for the graduation works this year, I have chosen to delve into distinctive yet harmonious realms of Indian miniature painting, and Siyahi Qalum (Pen and Ink paintings).’
Sangeeta told me that she mixes her own minerals to make the delicate and sophisticated hues in her artwork. Each one is therefore absolutely unique (and perhaps inimitable) in its colouration.
The piece that struck me the most was ‘Phoenix – the Symbol of Hope’. As Sangeeta explained, the bird, done in shell gold and white gold, signified prosperity coming to the impoverished. Especially the mothers in such places of hard destitution.
What drew my attention to the piece was the peacock feathers in the phoenix and the borrowings of the Chinese art style throughout. Truly, the peacock is an opulent creature and does stand for wealth in Asian cultures, as Sangeeta explained to me. But the peacock is also the national bird of India. Could Sangeeta have been trying to share the wealth that is India with the world in this one?
Her pen and ink work in ‘The Elephant’ is exceptional, painstaking, and she must be proud of this piece because she has it on her business card. The eye of the elephant is my favourite detail in this painting, besides the wrinkles that suggest age – because the eye is so beautiful and soulful. It breathes the life into the piece with the dainty corner which is reminiscent of Indian beauties such as Radha in Indian miniatures. She has explained that the pen and ink technique is one of her favourites. When she gave me the business card, I joked with her in Hindi: ‘Shiva has cut off the head of Ganesha and given it to me’. She had just told me that she is interested in the sacred animals of Asian mythology – as can be seen in the phoenix image.
Geometric patterns and tiles in rich, warm brown colours and gold was the general aesthetic of this artist. Sophisticated and mature in ambience, the works also suggested luxury with the ideas of chocolate and coffee swirling around in my head.
The patterning of stars and hexagons in a rectangular frame was one of my favourite pieces (see the artist’s Instagram account, given above). It was called ‘Wishing Star’ and I wondered what yearnings the artist had in mind when she made it. I would suggest a desire for order and control in these regularised forms – amidst the chaos of this earthly life and these cares and troubles. Perhaps it is that order that attracts us artists to art.
I also liked the Wellspring, 2024, which signifies someone that ‘selflessly radiates their energy to the world’. It was interesting that some of the tiles were left blank in this piece – three of them to be precise. I wondered at the meaning. Were such people such a rarity?
‘New works inspired by ancient traditions’ – the art of faith and Christian spirituality.
‘Hebrews IX’ is an exceptional work which combines beautiful calligraphy with beautiful patterning and framing. The aesthetic is Medieval, a perspective in which, in contrast to the present, religion is dominant above secular power and authority. And again, in contrast to contemporary artwork, in which the content is sometimes thin to non-existent and many times hopelessly trivial and ephemeral, here we have the foregrounding of the words of holy scripture which the believer must imagine as eternal, timeless, awesomely powerful and rich. It makes a refreshing change – even for a non-believer.
Because art is something that you have to believe in. Like a religion. Your ideas are something that you have to believe in like a religion too. Without that, what are these mere empty forms and vessels that many are content to fabricate?
Thomas is an extremely charming and clear narrator of his work and his influences. What he calls ‘Curvilinear geometry’ as experiments in form and tiling he told me derived from Islamic geometry, although in places he has married Hindu iconography into the designs.
The forms can be energetic, spiritual, intricate. One constant theme that runs through the work is the silk thread because the silk routes created such a culture about them. Many of the works have striking visual similarities with lace and doilies, some with mandalas.
He draws with objects like a set of compasses and cuts out the designs with a scalpel.
The experiments with three dimensional form were breathtaking, particularly in the dome that he created. The dome excited me. I could see the potential for such places as an immersive art experience, perhaps a direction in interior design. Such a spiritual space inside with these lighted three dimensional objects that appear as a created artist’s universe.
Signal (my joy) – | 49x75cm | Handmade watercolour and natural watercolour on stained paper
There was a beautiful Indian aesthetic to this work with the perfect forms of the patterning, the sinuous lines and then the vivid, saturated colours. The fluency of the piece and its effect was absolutely amazing. As a representation of joy, it was immaculate, intriguing, immersive. Part of the magic of the piece is the interweaving of the elements which creates relationships between the different forms and render a fascinating complexity. The rectangular frame which bounds but which is also transcended suggests a joy beyond and within the limit. Not all of the piece is abstract – there seems to be a representation of the sun within a circle – the joy burning with energy within, radiating out of the body and filling it with light. Emotion caught within art perfectly.
What interested me most in this artist that works in Persian miniatures was the way that she integrated flowers into her work, including in calligraphy. There were very intricate miniature designs which displayed the talent needed for miniature painting: absolute concentration, the ability to render impeccable details and the skills of arrangement and adorning. My favourite piece was the rendition of the Bismillah in floral art. Flowers offered to god in the way that we offer them in India, such as the hibiscus to the Dark Mother, Maa Kaali.
Versatility. Analysis of form in ‘Monad Generating the Six’ in gold against black which looked very stylish and modernist. The pieces about the elements including ‘Air’ and ‘Earth’ were a unique combination of landscape art with geometry. An investigation of the styles of art in the combination in a whole, an exercise of comparison, contrast and enriching from both spheres.
Beautifully fluid and textured ceramic tiles with a range of plant derived motifs. I myself love to draw these things too and invent my own designs, but this artist sees herself as the custodian of a tradition. The move to what has traditionally been regarded as mere ornamentation and to make it central is the idea to take what has been marginalised and distanced from meaning and to make it meaningful, to make it the focus. The intent is revolutionary – and just. Because what is on the periphery is sometimes what is most beautiful and most precious – especially in an age in which plant life and its survival is the key to the future.
A mastery of the beautiful garden, with artwork inspired by Indian classical music. A particularly interesting piece of work was the beautiful doors which were portals into different landscapes. Vivid colouration and wonderful detail in these energetic works.
Images of love spectacularly rendered in the forms of Krishna and Radha, the divine couple, the essence of love. I am named after Krishna, the Hindu god of love. The sacred geometries of India were inspiring. This artist was one of my favourites because she connected me to my origins and our traditions as Indians so much. My favourite piece, flooded with light, was ‘Divine Love in Light’, an Indian miniature styled stained glass panel with metal oxide and silver stain, soldered with lead. The Divine couple are shown here amongst the flowers and trees in a shower of gold. Exquisitely beautiful, an image of love. Krishna’s Radha and Radha’s Krishna:
Photographs reproduced by permission from the exhibition curator for my personal blog which is non-commercial and written with ‘fair use’ for academic comment and analysis. I will remove any photographs if there is any issues and there has been any misunderstanding.
One of my favourite Hindi songs says that love is expressed by adorning a flower in a love letter. It is what the writer (the lyricist) says because he writes to the woman that he loves. Here, we have a book with a flower inside it. Of course, fairy tales come to us mostly in books now that the oral tradition is dead. One of the themes of this book series by the artist is supposed to be the ‘journey inward’. Following the Protestant Revolution in reading, a journey into a book is a journey inward, as you try to understand yourself through the reading, to arrive at a distant truth. But is the destination the flower? Perhaps for some. And then, what does the flower represent? Or, more to the point, what does the flower not represent? For me, the flower will always be Woman. And Sex. Or, to put it in symbolic terms, connection. Which leads to reproduction. This is the destination at the ultimate aim of the journey inward. The Flowering of the Mind.
The nymph in the fairy tale, the artist says, is the subject of transformation, someone that can be anyone, and influence the natural world around them. This painting is about the power of transformation. Is the context the global nightmare that is human induced climate change? Is the hope in transformation about this? There are red scribbles on the woman’s body. Is this blood? Is she hurt? Will transformation heal her and the planet? The painting is across two screens and cut in half. There is violence at the heart of this image.
The fear of death: the brief glance at death’s feet as he slides down a chimney to kill an old married couple from the Polish fairy tale. Unseen death covered over and disguised in a structure of disavowal – we conceal the reality of death because it is too traumatic when we are grieving, like the reader will grieve the violent endings of these fairy tales. A traumatic illustration that has followed the artist around since he was a child. Accompanied by the book that has had pages torn out from it and sutured to the chimney which is made out of paper – the stuff of trauma.
Sanem Özdemir ‘Evvel zaman içinde, kalbur saman içinde /Once upon a time, in a griddle of straw’ (2024)
A testament to the strong women in fairy tales. And woman as beginning, since the title of the painting is about the traditional Turkish beginning of the story. Woman is beginning because she is the origin of life. Woman is beginning because she is the one that teaches us to look, talk, she is the one that writes our destiny in life. The beginning is woman and the ending is woman. In Western culture, this is recognised in the palindrome: the words for the mother begin and end in the same letter: mum, mom, ma’am, madam.
The woman is by the water. The beginning of the land? The beginning of life in the water for all life on this planet?
A comment upon the ubiquity of the female saviour and their self sacrifice in fairy tales – and in life.
The egg at the bottom perhaps indicates that one of the themes is about female reproduction since women have eggs – that sacrifice for children is written into the biology of women. The idea seems reinforced by the imagery of nature in the piece, with all the trees. But then, the cultural images above the egg suggest that it is a social construct that women should sacrifice to save others (is this paradox?).
A kingly figure is flipped upside down, perhaps to indicate that the collage is an attack upon male ego and patriarchal rule – that which dictates the script.
In speaking, Darico told me that feminism has changed the way that we look at the world and fairy tales.
This is a reinterpretation of a painting which reinterprets an opera which reinterprets a story about magic and love – the fairy tale animal princess that gives love and bestows presents:
As a reinterpretation of a reinterpretation of reinterpretation, this is about the influence of fairy tales and the games of Chinese whispers that they create to forge the identities of readers, artists, opera writers and photographers.
The work is for a charity which supports Downs Syndrome, which the muse has, and some of the proceeds from the work will go to a theatre for those with the syndrome. So the whole thing is about the creation of culture from culture from culture – the never ending cycle of stories with stories within stories, copies of copies of copies.
Did you know that Down’s Syndrome comes from an extra copy of chromosome 21? Did the photographer know this? If so, then the work is about copies and their creation of differences, at the level of images, stories and even at the bodily level.
Katia Kesic ‘Affirmation 5. Take the courage to be seen’ (2022)
The fragmented hand that holds up the mirror to us. We look inside it. We are seen – but by ourselves. This is perhaps supposed to be looking at ourselves honestly in the mirror, having the courage to do so. But, perhaps, at the same time, it is about the courage of being seen as an artist – someone that holds up a mirror to the world – with the artist’s hand which creates the work. There is no disconnection – the artist shows us who we are.
A representation of fear as distorted body, darkness, abstraction, the vague, the indistinct, the blurred. The photography captures the fear in time as a product of time – so there is motion blur. Why the time? Because fear passes. In a sense, this is a photographic history of fear. Just as the fairy tale is a literary history of fear. There is a parallel though – both are fictions.
Because real fear is when you look at the ugliest things in the whole world in crystal clear photographic fidelity and they are emblazoned on your mind as a scar which keeps you up at night, screaming in your dreams. So these photographs and fairy tales are actually protecting us from the reality and the trauma of fear. The acceptable face of fear which masks.
These Indian women represent the Mahabharata and Indian mythology featuring male gods? Why? The series is called ‘My Head is a Vessel Full of Thoughts’. These women are the artist that has been inspired by Indian culture. And she has become strong, a load carrier as a result. These images are about the strength of Indian culture. But also woman carrying the weight of myths about men, gods and heroes as men.
The mirror that the woman sees her face in, with her back to us seems to be in half the shape of a heart. Is it about a concealed love? Since the partner in the mirror of the heart is absent?
The wounded heart is black. Because it is the black that have been hurt. The heart is cut open and its bleeds – the violence that has been inflicted upon the heart is the violence that has been inflicted upon the love of the black. Instead of love given to us, we are cut to the core by the hate of this society and the ‘lovers’ in it – since they can never love us. The wounded heart is the rejection that we, the black, face.
There is a face with four eyes in symmetry with one another. In India, there is a saying that in love, two eyes become four. We share the gaze with someone. Our perspectives blend into each other. In fact, when you look into the eyes of the woman you love… But this is another story that the woman that you love knows…
“The Arachnids were found on witch’s altars in southern Russia, dating back to the early 18th century. The text includes unpronounceable spells, and the images contain some particles that can be used in the preparation of a love potion”.
In the artwork, we are presented with women’s magic: the magic of love. So the question is, who is this spell meant to make a lover of the artist? Is it us, the viewer? Are we supposed to love the artist witch? And what is the nature of this love – with these unpronounceable spells that only work through writing? A reflection on women’s silence in love – when the men have to do all the talking while the women never move their lips? The lover the artist wants is a secret of silence…
Elena Stashkova ‘Herne’s Golden horns’ (2023)
A representation of the horned god of the European peoples. In gold to suggest that mythology is gold, that the god still has enduring and everlasting value in culture. A comment perhaps on the valuations that we bestow on the gods in mythology. Perhaps an attempt to bring to the earth the imagination, to breathe life into the treasures of story and culture (like Agammenon’s golden death mask at Troy?).
This is ostensibly about death and loss. But if you look at the female figure’s dress, it transforms surreally into a clown’s face with a big bow tie. That is spooky and perhaps relays the idea that tragedy can turn into comedy and comedy into tragedy.
Crying is heavy. We carry it. She is carrying the tears around her neck. And, like a farmer, she appears to water the earth. The tears have faces. She is sowing heads into the ground. Because the head has the brain in it – sadness makes us see reality because reality is sadness. That’s why sadness is the head and the mind. Suffering makes the mind grow.
This is a reflection of pure emotion. But what emotion is it? Red for anger? Red for desire? The big, dilated eyes could be anger or lust. The idea of a ‘bloom’? Emotion as the flower? Lust causes a red blush. Anger makes us see red. Maybe the ambiguity is intentional. A deliberate blurring of distinction. Maybe you have to be a Greek to understand this one.
Lera Dergunova ‘She’ (2024)
Artist statement:
“Flowers have always symbolised significant aspects of human nature, such as life, death, love, passion, and power. My first memory of a flower comes from “Beauty and the Beast”, where I was scared by the Rose losing its petals, symbolising imperfection and lifelessness. Through my work, I aim to help people accept their internal softness and the parts of themselves considered “weak” and “defenceless”. I want to unify opposites and show that their strength lies in acceptance and integration”.
Gaining strength through crotchet, confronting fear and the idea of fragmentation and developing resilience through repetitive patterning and creating a whole which masters trauma and loss.
Alona Rubinstein ‘Metaphorical Cards’ (2023)
Artist Statement
In my metaphorical cards, I strive to offer viewers a unique way to find answers to their inner questions through imagery. These cards, created by hand using mixed techniques, predominantly watercolour, serve as a tool for self-discovery. Each card contains a metaphorical image that can be interpreted based on personal experience and intuition.
Suneels’ Comment is ‘no comment’ – because these ones, the whole point is that you are supposed to look at them and go onto your own journey. I have been on my own journey with these. However, one point. With the embrace, there is one behind that does not embrace. The past is rejection.
“This diptych explores the life and death of a modern Thumbelina. The girl could not withstand the current ecological conditions and was buried in a teapot. In today’s environment, fairy tales are not always possible.”
The idea that current reality kills the fairy tale. The diptych seems to be about the death of romantic love. And therefore the death of everything that is human. Because in the story, Thumbelina falls in love with someone and has a happy ending. The current climate is killing love.
A portrait might be about many things. But it is often about a moment of human connection with someone and a relationship. The artist’s relationship with the sitter, or even himself or herself in a self-portrait. I was inspired by the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery where I used to volunteer just before the Covid Pandemic. I wanted to be – and still want to be – a portrait painter and and a portrait photographer. The human face, the human form, personality, psychology – all these are endlessly fascinating to me. Life gives us opportunities. Even if the people you care about the most won’t let you take them, sometimes you get lucky. Just yesterday, I took three portraits of one of my closest friends with my camera who has always resisted my entreaties. He was very pleased with the results as he thought himself very fine in them. I told him the truth: I see him as very good looking. So in my camera, he is good looking. I am comfortable with my sexuality: only women are attractive to me. So I don’t mind telling men that they are handsome if I think so. It is not often.
Here are a few notes about the work that some of my peers are doing because they actually have the time to do these things. I look at their work with a trace of jealousy because they have time, something that I don’t have, and willing sitters, people close to them. Again, something I do not have in my life.
Download the large-print exhibition guide here to see more detailed notes about each of the paintings that I discuss:
The Last Portrait By Aleksandra Sokolova Oil on canvas, 2020
An old man. A veteran from the world wars. An artist. With a mug and a piece of bread. A commonplace scene of life elevated to art. The layers in the background build up in the humble kitchen scene in a series of three, giving a strong horizontal, structured feel to the painting. The man’s head is caught in the second and topmost of the three layers. Wisps of smoke emerge behind the head of this figure, who is imposing and strong, giving him perhaps an appearance of what? Heat, spirituality (he died while this was being painted – is it a spirit photograph that is capturing his soul departing)? A contrast to his strength with his paunch? What does he signify? Consumption, as he is eating? A moment of repose? But there is movement coming or which has just finished. The glass is just on the edge of the table – either he has just put it back or is just about to pick it up. Time is ambiguously presented: a snapshot in either the immediate before or the immediate future.
Anna By Jack Freeman Oil on canvas, 2023
Her black eyes. But more than that, her black hair which dominates the image for me. The hair of the one that you love. Wild and untamed on the pillow in the bed and seen from above. Twisting about in its full richness like a dark forest above her head. Like a mermaid in the water. The hair of the goddess. In Hindu mythology, when Draupadi was dishonoured, she vowed to keep her hair untamed until she bathed it in the blood of her oppressor. One of her husbands vowed to drink the oppressor’s blood, a terrible oath. The hair of revenge. Shiva, the god of destruction and creation, the Lord of the Dance, his hair was also unkempt and powerful and contained the waters, the Ganges that descended from heaven. Why the water? Why think of it? She is holding a cup. She seems suspended in water, with that crowning glory of hair and its strength. The hair of the woman that you love.
Stereo (diptych) By Peter Davis Acrylic on canvas, 2023
A study in how colour creates unconscious meaning and prejudice. Two studies of a Muslim woman side to side, one in black clothes and another in white, with hijabs in both. The background is the opposite colour to the clothes in both cases. In black clothes, she appears more scarred. In white clothes, she does appear different. But what is the difference when you look at the images side by side? The difference is that when you associate ethnic minorities with black, black as it contrasts with the whiteness that is our surrounding and our culture, then in this culture, we appear scarred. The eyes appear to have no life or soul in them in the black costume, whereas they appear to have more life in the white costume. In the white costume, the face seems friendlier. There is an exposure of how taking on whiteness for an ethnic minority is what makes them palatable in this society. And the lesson? The lesson in the choice. Because I have chosen to take the blackness. If not in clothes, in my behaviour. And, in one context that I am in, many people call me by the name of one of the black men that work there. Because they recognise the blackness in me, even though I am Asian.
Double Portrait of Clara By Michael Slusakowicz Oil on canvas, 2021
A woman decides between two university courses. She becomes two people, one whose shoulder supports the other’s head. But what is the message here? An idea of self support? Or isn’t this about a woman’s decision making process, when she becomes two people because the decision will be life altering. She can either take the decision in which she is the support or the supported. Isn’t this about a woman’s career choice and whether she wants to make enough money to be ‘independent’ or whether she will need someone to look after her? Since in this society, education just means money to most people?
The supported woman wears blue and seems depressed, tired, languid. Because this is how this society sees the dependent. But look again at the woman that is supporting. She looks away from who she supports coldly, a glaring contrast to the warm colours of yellow and red that she is wearing. And she is blue in the face too. Ultimately, whatever the decision that is going to be made, both of the women are blue and seem depressed. At the moment of greatest excitement in life, when you are forging the future, the women are blue. Because one decision perhaps, will be to have wealth but not happiness in what you do. And the other decision will be to have the work but not the reward. The bind that informs all our choices for education in this kind of society.
The floral shirt integrates the man into the palm house at Kew Gardens. The requirement of the moment is to be integrated into nature. However, he holds a flower that droops downwards – the flowers are dying. They need their protector, they need help like the blooming flowers in the palm house that they are contrasted to. He is old, with white hair. The protection is in the hands of the older generation. The children do not have the resources. But behind, there are all youngsters walking around the Gardens: one day they will be in a position to protect because they will have the resources. It is just a matter of time.
Gerard in Hospice By Jackie Anderson Oil on cotton, 2023
A memorial to a dying husband by a loving wife. Minimalistic. Done in a wash of brown, delicate and virtuoso like a Da Vinci drawing. Simple, elegant. Hugely impactful. In the style of the succinct, in the style of brevity. The silence of real grief behind it, the restrained emotion, the guarded feelings that would burst out and consume everything if they could.
Jacqueline with Still Life By Antony Williams Tempera on board, 2020
A portrait of desire, a nude of a beautiful woman. The one painting that seemed to be most about desire. And desire with a mystery. The face, the artist says, is mysterious. And the symbolism is mysterious. The figure is between a fan and a heater – extremes of temperature compete with each other on either side. What does this say about the body in the middle which the fan is to cool or the heater to heat? And don’t we know that heat and cold are how we think about desire and lust? Is this a comment about art and the nude? That we have to reach a medium between lust and cool observation when we are representing our desire?
The still life that is compared and contrasted to the naked body below. A model of a dinosaur, a model of two houses. A dinosaur living in modern times? Sublime nature which towers above human built design and homes? Is the idea of nature contrasting and comparing with the woman ‘in a state of nature’ in the nude? There is a cross at the base of the wooden table – introducing the iconography of the wooden cross to complicate things. A resonance of Christ’s nakedness on the cross? Woman as victim and martyr?
The Most Important Thing in the World By Stephen Leho Oil on canvas, 2020
A woman unpacking a home-made mobile after a mental strain. The face lost in the task. The strangeness of the moment as she destroys what is built, undoes what is done. Perhaps a comment upon the craziness of attention in this society – the trivial things that we bestow our attention on, their ultimate meaninglessness. But also an image of hope: because, hopefully, she will become better. And bestow her attention onto something that she should be bestowing it upon. Something productive and not destructive.
I’ll Never Not Miss You By Laura Carey Oil on canvas, 2023
The emotions as folds and cloth which covers the body of the person we bestow the emotions onto, making them impossible to see as they are – the human condition.
Quoted from the exhibition catalogue.
Laura Carey painted her mother enveloped in a bright red blanket during an afternoon sleep brought on by her chemotherapy treatment. She explains: ‘Her blanket is my love, my anger, hopelessness, grief as well as her cancer all at once.’
Self-Portrait at Low Tide By Alex Tzavaras Oil on linen, 2023
A modern version of Munch’s ‘The Scream’ it appeared to me, with the man in the hoodie that sees hope in the beautiful sky reflected in the sand after a mental illness. We can see the sky behind him in its original state. Not what he sees. This is the thing that got me in the painting – you can’t see the hope in it. You can’t see his hope. What instigates his hope is there up in the sky. But the medium between the sky and us and him, that is not there. Why not? What is this saying about hope and how we can see it? Is it saying that you need a magical moment and unity with nature and existence to have hope? A moment that can’t be shared with others? Is it a comment upon the individualistic nature of hope? That it can only be created in an individual and not in a society, that it can’t be shared? That it is a moment of individual, private psychology?
Or am I reading this completely wrong? Is the idea that hope is always there behind us, following us around. That we just need to see it somewhere? Where is not important?
Maybe the idea is that hope is not really there. There is just its illusion. It is built upon sand, to quote the bible. Sand is not steady. Perhaps the mental illness and the darkness is still there:
life cries
her eyes fill with tears
that never fall
and they hide
for us to slip on
Before it’s Ruined (or an Unrealized Mean Side) By Rebecca Orcutt Oil on canvas, 2020
A woman. An oversized coat. A web. Perhaps an idea of weaving since the textiles are so conspicuous and perhaps an allusion to the Greek myth about the spider’s web and weaving as a competition between Arachne and Athena. If so, about woman’s transformation into nature and the fragility of nature, since the web goes across her forehead and seems to be united with her body as well as her clothes which it is also overlapping against (reinforcing the idea of weaving and the web, the idea of textiles). It could be the wish to be integrated into nature as woman becomes spider but also the desire not to be, as the title suggests that the web is to be torn by the model in the painting, that the work of weaving is to be undone (as traditional roles for femininity as woman weaving are resisted?) An ambiguous and mysterious piece of work.
I did not pay attention to fashion when I was a child. I never read any newspapers or watched the news until I had my Cambridge interview coming up when I was seventeen and I was told I had to start doing that because no one had ever told me to read a newspaper before. I was not exposed to Western culture except in pop music, largely American TV shows and commercial films. So, the first moment I will always remember of Naomi Campbell is in a music video: Michael Jackson’s ‘In the Closet’ in 1992 when I was ten years old. Despite all the allegations and the overtly sexual nature of the song which sometimes threaten to spoil the delight of the music and singing, this is one of my favourite songs by Michael Jackson whose music I grew up with as a small boy. I was dazzled by Naomi, her perfect looks and her statuesque body in this song, her exhilarating dance moves. The curves of her impossibly long legs. She was the kind of woman I had never seen before in my life, me who lived outside of London in a white area with very little diversity. She was the kind of woman that made you notice that there were women in the world. She did not look like she was real. Looking at her was like looking at a different, glamorous, ideal world.
The next moment with Naomi is again something that I would never forget my whole life. The year was 1994. Now, I was twelve years old. We were watching Top of the Pops which I watched regularly because I have always loved singing for as long as I can remember. Suddenly, Naomi Campbell came onto the screen in an Indian sari. I had watched Hindi song and dance routines with women in saris my whole life in Hindi films (‘Bollywood’ – a term I don’t like to use because it is so derivative of Western cinema and Hollywood). But here, instead of the fair skinned Indian actresses that I had always seen, who were usually petite and curvaceous, here was a statuesque, dark skinned woman in Indian dress. It was an unexpected, dazzling, amazing sight. Back then, you didn’t really see women in saris singing songs on Top of the Pops. There wasn’t diversity on British television (has anything really changed there?) The performance was absolutely unique. And Naomi was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my entire life and looked even more beautiful in the sari, because that was from our culture.
You can see this performance here:
That moment is how I will always remember Naomi Campbell. She often wears saris. Because her ethos in fashion is to promote diversity and to celebrate the style that Western fashion has ignored – India and Africa.
As you can imagine, my visit to the Naomi Campbell exhibit at the Victoria and Albert museum was a trip down memory lane, with perhaps one of the most remarkably beautiful women that had made an impact upon me as I was entering puberty. I got a chance to see what I had not seen at the time – Naomi walking on the catwalk, Naomi the activist. Naomi on the magazine covers. I had only known her as a dancer and a singer. Now, I finally got to see what she was as a supermodel.
I was wary of these celebrity exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert museum before. That is because I was not really a fan of any of the celebrities that they were showing. Now, here I was, a fan of the exquisite beauty of Naomi Campbell. The exhibition made you feel close to her passage to fame and to her. It showed you the life that she was living, the clothes that she wore, the people who she was friends with. The exhibition enhanced the sense of connection you feel to remarkable people, the basking in the glory of their achievement that makes you rekindle the love you feel for your idols. More than this, the exhibition showed you the impact that your idols made on the world around them at the time, the fans that shared your passion for this amazing human being.
In the exhibition, they said that Naomi was seen as being able to wear any kind of fashion costume and make it look good, to pull it off. That wonderful athletic dancer’s body that she has, the imposing tallness, the statuesque quality, it works on everything. Whatever she wears looks dynamic and fluid, and, in fact, many of her clothes were figure-hugging. You could sense the powerful quality of being able to wear anything when you looked at the clothes on the mannequins. The clothes, beautiful as they were, looked lifeless without her in them. She exuded power and confidence, the energy of the noble beauty that she has in her appearance and within her. The style.
People often remark on my clothes. But some of them are very cheap clothes from market stalls and most of them have been bought at a sale because no one else wanted them, or could wear them. It is not the clothes themselves that make them look good. It is the body. I tell people this whether they believe me or not – the clothes look good because I am within them and I have absolute confidence in myself, despite being short, thin and not being particularly broad. Someone once told me that I look good in anything and a professional male model half my age once told me that he wanted to look like me and dress like me when he was my age. Naomi Campbell had even more of this quality of super confidence than me, perhaps more than anyone else. And with her, she has the kind of body that only a supermodel can have. Whether it is posture, gesture on the face, the apparent, easy athleticism of the body, or some kind of unconscious signification, perhaps to do with the connotations of ethnicity in a white universe, she has the body of power and visual display.
The exhibition was spectacular in every sense. And the appeal of it was that women want to imitate the power and confidence that Naomi has. There was a catwalk where you could walk like Naomi, become her in a sense. Watch yourself in a video as you become her. She is a role model for so many women and for women that are non-white, proof that you can rise to the absolute top despite prejudice, racism and a lack of real diversity in this society. However, I did note to myself how she was able to achieve this success: by being absolutely extraordinary. By being one of the most beautiful people alive. By having that air of absolute confidence, dynamism, power. These qualities are rare and not easy to replicate. And they show you how ethnic minorities have to achieve this level of success in this society: by being a million times more talented than white people, this being the ‘fairness’ and ‘meritocracy’ of this society.
diary of a lone man 