'Siren' installed as part of 'All at Sea' , Ferens gallery, 1998
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The viewer is drawn to the open box on the top of the stack...
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...in the middle of the painting there's a porthole...
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...as you look into the darkness a light comes on. The base of each wooden box has been cut away so you can see all the way through down to the floor. At the bottom a record player begins to play,...
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...the music echoes up through here.
(click play below to listen to the music) |
Commissioned for the 'Ferens art gallery' exhibition 'All at Sea', 1998. Curated by Anne Bukantas the exhibition was a showcase for the Ferens gallery's extensive maritime art collection. It contained many historical paintings, some of which were over 400 years old. The role my work played in the show was to represent 'contemporary' maritime art. I was the only artist in the exhibtion who was still alive!.
I always say that my credentials for being a 'contemporary maritime artist' stem from the fact that many years earlier I was sent to Hull to be an art student. Like a modern day Robinson Crusoe I collected driftwood from the river estuary and built a boat to try and escape...a student project that I still regard as my seminal work!
I always say that my credentials for being a 'contemporary maritime artist' stem from the fact that many years earlier I was sent to Hull to be an art student. Like a modern day Robinson Crusoe I collected driftwood from the river estuary and built a boat to try and escape...a student project that I still regard as my seminal work!
'Seascape Escape' my attempt to escape from art college in a boat made of driftwood in 1989.
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Herbert Drapers 'Ulysses and the Sirens' , a large painting in the Ferren's collection. from 1909
.Not' the basement of the Ferens but a generic municipal sculpture collection in a dark corner of a museum somewhere.
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A prestigious commission; part of the arrangement was that after the show the work would become part of the Ferens gallery collection. On my first visit the curator and her assistant took me to the basement where the art collection is kept and gave me my brief.
"... Obviously we don't want to tell you what to make exactly but bare in mind this is all the space we have left in storage ... just don't make it any bigger than this!"
The basement of the Ferrens felt a bit like the hold of a cargo ship that didn't go anywhere. Like an ancient shipwreck it was a time capsule of treasures - Old art that had 'also' been contemporary once! I took a quick look around; there were some important artist's names in the collection. Honoured company for my work to share the darkness with for many years to come. This encounter with the past and view of my future became the inspiration for the piece.
"... Obviously we don't want to tell you what to make exactly but bare in mind this is all the space we have left in storage ... just don't make it any bigger than this!"
The basement of the Ferrens felt a bit like the hold of a cargo ship that didn't go anywhere. Like an ancient shipwreck it was a time capsule of treasures - Old art that had 'also' been contemporary once! I took a quick look around; there were some important artist's names in the collection. Honoured company for my work to share the darkness with for many years to come. This encounter with the past and view of my future became the inspiration for the piece.
Some influencial visual source material for my work - Random crates with art inside.
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Sketch from my re-discovered notes.
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Sketch from my re-discovered notes.
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When the commission was completed I scribbled some sketches and notes about the work to explain my thought process to Anne Bukantas. I wasn't obliged to do this I just suffer a lot from imposter syndrome and I thought I needed to justify myself. A few years later I was amazed and amused to find my notes were on the internet being used as a learning resource for art students. I never kept a copy of these notes myself so it was nice to be able to download them from a young art students online contextual studies blog. The notes are reproduced below.
The last page of notes has a list of song titles I had considered for the music to go inside 'Siren'. They include a song by the singer 'David Whitefield', a local of Hull who had had his heyday in the 1950's. I'd heard of him only because his records would sometimes appear in the second hand record shop at the end of the road where I lived in Hull as a student. Unfortunately I couldn't find a David Whitefield record with a maritime theme that was the right tempo. However I liked this element of chance and discovery in the process of finding the right song. A process that resonated and felt in keeping with an artwork that was going to be laying undiscovered in a basement for many years. The piece of music I eventually chose, 'Stowaway ' by Barbara Lyon was one of many 78 records that I bought on car boot sales with a nautical sounding title. It sounded right but importantly 'a stowaway' also echoed the imposter syndrome notions I had throughout the process of making this work.