CosmiKnot

In June last year I installed my Doctorate painting exhibition at UEL. I don’t like to say it was about David Bowie’s song Life on Mars, though not because it wasn’t (it was) but because I’m not sure it was “about” anything. It was more an attempt to capture some kind of essence that I felt Bowie represents. One of the things I love about Bowie from that song onwards is how he captures the meaninglessness of modern life but fills his songs with meaning. The meaning, however, is not something easy to put your finger on. It is more like a feeling of yearning and hope in the face of… well yes meaninglessness. You might think I’m being pretentious but this depth of feeling is what keeps us as humans dreaming that we can ultimately connect through creative experience. That is partially what Bowie means to me. He can be viewed as the personification of Camus’ urge to live life as fully and creatively as possible in response to the Sisyphusian struggles we all face. But let me be clear...

Terry Baker undid  the buckles of his armour plated jerkin and shook himself free.  Phil called out after him "gosh tez you have got big muscles" as he skipped out the door towards the shower block. These days life at Bog Stands (short for Bog Standard's) was getting duller and duller which pleased the boys no end. In a world bursting to the seams with magic and coincidence each of them had previously lain in their beds dreaming of the mundane - the chance to pass the time with a simple worthwhile task like mining for coal or breaking rocks or labeling envelopes even. To remind himself of simpler times Terry had kept a stash of look and learn comics handed down to him from his particularly straight forward uncle Eric who had worked as a store detective by day and was a scout master of a Tuesday and Friday evenings. Now of course no one knew what a reef knot was let alone a round turn and two half hitches. This was clearly, Terry thought, due to the saturation of life with...

Harry potter is culturally more significant than the mafa goldsmiths show. There was a brilliant film in the goldsmiths ma show which set two parallel written narratives to death metal. One line from this stuck in my head. Hegel is stuck in abstraction. Philosophy quickly leads to over awareness. So why did no one (with two accidental exceptions) at the MA show stride over to the exit from the hall of mirrors and show us the way out? We must concede that the value of such an exhibition is either individual genius or potential monetary value. Narrative absorption is associated with entertainment and is therefore not valid in the serious art realm. It is treated as a laugh up the sleave joke. I have just sat with a reverent audience through the last Harry Potter movie. Whilst the plot was written by an individual its relevance lies in the group endeavour that brought it to the screen. It was confused and only occasionally truly manifesting emotional depth but as a piece of art that ac...