Abstraction is like letting a bull loose in a china shop and then trying to interpret the debris. It is like a room in which the entire furniture is changed every day. Abstraction takes the familiar, throws it to the wind and scatters it to where, when it’s found, it will not be known what it is. It is like opening the dictionary of a foreign tongue nobody has ever spoken. It is a place in which we go with our usual collection of expectations and may find ourselves unable to satisfy even one of them – and we have no idea how this really feels. Faced with abstraction our emotional compass slips from our grasp, falls to ground, and breaks beyond repair. Within abstraction float the future wisps of words not yet formed in any human mind. By its very nature abstraction has the potential to put a stop to everything, for at least a moment or two. The subject of abstraction is new feeling. Abstraction acquaints us in the vaguest of measure with feelings yet to be named by humankind. Abstraction touches emotions we can barely discern and certainly can not name, yet we known are there, because they have been familiar to us for a long time. It is possible that abstract art activates abstract emotions which because they have no name, we lose the moment we feel them. An abstract can not tell you anything – you just have to listen to what emerges from the silence. Abstraction is a landscape that has been thrown into a concrete mixer and re-assembled with no reference to the original. It can kick our roots and foundations from under us. It scatters our reference points. It is as though we have suddenly gone through a doorway and into a wall-less, size-less depth-less room, the context equivalent of a vacuum. Abstraction presents us with a blank map, within which we must become our own cartographer.
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I was part of the above group exhibition a fortnight ago, June 2019. I exhibited four images from the series, Formshire: from left to right, Thonninjur, A Softer Season Began to Prevail, Formshire and Humm Thir.
Maybe, I approach a piece of abstract art like I am going to school on the first day. In fact, abstraction may be the fresh slate, the original within, the sudden confrontation without a recognisable anchor or rope for safety; the exposed individual inside, that I ultimately can’t escape. Is this why it interests me? A re-glimpsing of a state of innocence; touching me below or above sophisticated words, beyond and over the horizon of adult vocabulary. Yet, the art world provides words and I read some of them, in the hope somebody will explain, elaborate and theories with accuracy. . And, perhaps continually I discover, I am still at school on that first day.
_____ Abstraction is like a parochial sub-language, with colloquialisms and oddities that make it comparable in some respects to the more universal language of representation and incomprehensible in others. Abstract photography begins from the same place as representational photography – it needs the real world as its material, and then, it veers off along less well-trodden pathways, into regional discourses, odd dialects that the speaker of representational tongues may well struggle to relate with. As somebody who uses abstract forms, I also find the dialect often beyond my comprehension, the vocabulary short of the words to articulate what I need to convey. This, however, is acceptable to me, as abstraction contains elements of escape from the shackles of the world and if language can not easily chase it and capture its essence, then there seems to be a wildness and freedom in it, characteristics which I respect. ______________________________ At some point after I form a comment about the abstract photographs in Formshire, I realise it is inaccurate or only a small part of a discourse that may never be the same as it was the last time I approached it. Then, another sentence or paragraph is required to do some qualifying or amendment. However, one is in the realm of the non-concrete and thus, I should not be surprised that this process seems to go on ad infinitum. It is, in fact one of the attractions - that, like abstract nouns (such as, democracy, freedom, art) there are nuances of definition that grow like a tree, slowly adding new branches and leaves. As I cant see where it may end one needs, perhaps, to consider that a conclusion is not possible. On the other side of the debate, I suspect that words are a foolhardy attempt to turn abstract expression into an unnatural version of its pure, feral self and consequently may be one of the least sensible things to be done to abstract images. ________________________________ Here, follows an imaginary monologue of one of my images speaking to an unknown listener. In it , the aim is for the image to discuss its relationship with me and it's feelings about the fact that it cannot express itself except through its forms and thus, perhaps like the viewer, it relies on me to verbalise its inner world. This is because it can only speak through its forms unless I, its creator, choose to add anything else over and above – in addition to - the shapes, lines, colours, composition; all the formal elements. How would such a picture feel if it had an inner existence of its own (unknown even to me, for I know not fully how it came into existence – here, I mean the role of intuition and chance)? Especially, if I refused to communicate that part of its existence that I do happen to be aware of. Of course, the picture, may have an inner existence which I, the artist do not know of. And that is one of the excitements of art; that even the artist doesn't know the full extent of the secrets of the thing that they have made. Thus, they remain hidden to the artist and perhaps, may only be revealed to the viewer, who is able to perceive what the artist cannot. And, it could be argued that this thrilling possibility could be put forward as a reason against an artist statement. For a statement could distract and interrupt the process of a viewer being able to identify what the artist does not know about their own work. It may not. But, it could. “I am Thonninjur (pictured below and on the homepage), a digital photograph; a collection of coloured tones - mainly in the range of blue, pink and red with greyish hints, a variety of shapes, lines and an arrangement of these into a design. The artist who created me (and who also brought into existance the other images like me, a collection of abstract images he calls, Formshire), doesn't like any of us to talk about ourselves. He is known to occasionally utter Edward Hopper’s statement, “If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.” Of course, I do not have a voice, nor a pen or a keyboard. Yet, here I am managing to communicate. Ironic, when I think of how animated he becomes when people speak of what they want their art to talk about, and he points out that, "It can’t talk, all it can do is be, like a snow storm or sunlight illuminating the bed and surface of a stream." But, I for a few moments am slipping out, from verbal exile. I have made a few appearances in public, at exhibitions, and I was presented in a stony silence (without any explanations of my origins), and if anybody asked about me or the rest of us in the project – like, what are they made of and how are they done - he says, in his politest of tone that he finds it difficult to talk about us. I can tell you only a few things, because, I am just a picture (you must decide if I am anything more): I am an encounter of materials and light, on a sunny spring day, in a large caravan, which coupled as the artist’s residence and studio, located in a Cornish valley; a residence which the artist was deeply enthusiastic about. If I had the ability to reflect on matters that seem to concern him, maybe I would feel as much admiration for the place as he did, for without its influence, I would not exist. It was the natural light within the caravan that captured his affection: two large windows side by side allowing it to enter the space which he set up as a studio at one end of the caravan . He also sometimes mentions that Buddhist monks used the caravan as a place of retreat before he arrived. So, perhaps, to him, I am the product of Buddhic or meditative energy? Perhaps, just a little. Though not a Buddhist, he always felt the place had a scared air to it, an inspiring something. We, the images that make up the first year and a half of Formshire were all made, photographed and dismantled there. My material parts in the form I am recorded existed, thus, fleetingly. I am the chosen document of the series of images taken on that particular spring day, the one he decided was the most pleasing, of that session. I can tell you that I'm a source of frustration to the person who made. He frets over the possibility that he will never understand me or the rest of the abstractions that he has made in this project. In his opinion, you see, we are rather wild. He knows that we are born in the realm of impulse and from the wilderness inside himself – and that, also I and he are in on-going conflict with the forces of the mind which seeks to domesticate the unknowns within images like myself. The tamed domesticators of the art world encourage the firing of words and conclusions at images like me, and then metaphorically mounting us, like a trophy stuffed with interpretations. We enjoy re-animating ourselves – sometimes quickly, sometimes after a longer while, admiring their attempt to petrify us in words. While, at the same time intrigued by their futile efforts to describe with words the inner existence, that I know I feel, that I also know, here and now, briefly given the gift of words, that, I can’t convey because, there is no reference in the vocabulary of the human mind. The caravan was demolished during the summer, 2017." (The project Formshire began in the late winter of 2016) I am pleased to announce that I am having an exhibition at The Poly, Falmouth, Cornwall from 12th to 16th September 2017. The show will be open daily from 10 am until 5 pm, except on the Friday, when it will be open from 10 am until 7 pm.
The Poly is located at 24, Church Street, Falmouth, TR11 3EG (Telephone: 01326 319461). The show will contain works from my three recent projects, 34 Photographs, 30 Photographs and Visited by Gleams of the Sun. I was fortunate to take part in Beyond the Camera, at the Pingyao Photography Festival 2016, in Shanxi Province, China, September 19th-25th. I had four photographs in the show - they are the four grouped together on the left, to the right of the two images on the far left.
The above shows my photographs on display at the CraneKalman exhibition, Cream 2016, in Brighton in November.
I am taking part in the above group exhibition, Cream 2016, organised by CraneKalman, Brighton.
The second one in from the left, top row is mine, one of five that I am exhibiting. The photographic journal Source hosts a webpage titled Source BA Graduate Photography Online. It has been doing this for a few years now and I submitted some of my work for this year's graduate pages, 2016. Each year the journal - which subtitles itself The Photographic Review - commissions "three respected figures from the world of photography to choose their favourite sets of images from all the work submitted." This year there were three: Mike Trow, Anne Lyden and Angela Glienicke. The latter is the picture editor for Greenpeace UK and she included the above image in her selection. The chosen images were included in a supplement to the Summer 2016 issue of the journal, with a small write up from Angela Glienicke:
"Nigel Maynard's beautiful compositions of light and colour incorporate other visual art forms like painting, expanding the boundaries between the fine art genres. He transports the viewer into an airy space away from reality by arranging his materials in a fresh new way, leaving it to the viewer to interpret his abstract creations." One of my images has been selected by Creative Review magazine to appear on over a 1,000 JCDecaux digital screens across the country, during the last three weeks of July.
"As well as sitting alongside some of our busiest roads, the screens can also be found at the biggest stations in the country including London’s Euston, King’s Cross, Liverpool Street, London Bridge, St. Pancras, Victoria and Waterloo as well as at Brighton, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Piccadilly, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and York." "They are also placed at major shopping destinations like Bluewater, intu Lakeside, Bullring (Birmingham), St David’s (Cardiff), Liverpool One, Trinity Leeds, and Eldon Square (Newcastle) and intu Metrocentre (Newcastle), West Quay (Southampton) and Brent Cross (London) and many more." Quotation from: the Creative Review website article, CR and JCDecaux bring graduate work to screens across the country at https://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2016/july/cr-and-jcdecaux-bring-graduate-artwork-to-screens-across-the-country/. One of my images was selected by Free Range to be displayed with seven others on the glass frontage at 91, Brick Lane, London, for the five-week season of the Free Range Shows (June to mid-July 2016). Mine is the image, bottom right. The Free Range website: www.free-range.org.uk.
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