no-one/home

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Statement:  I have been exploring the poetic and metaphorical qualities of the paint that wanted to escape. For some time now I have pondered what paint would want to be if it were free from the pull of the paint brush, free from the call of the canvas and able to climb, crawl slide and sneak away from the perils of the palette.   What if paint rose to the Modernist claim that paint should refer to itself, in an ironic attempt to adapt itself to this cul de sac of a command?   Well it has, small creature like forms have taken shape and wait to be adored and admired for what they really are. The possibilities are endless in paints' quest to be itself...it no longer wants to be Other! It wants to be free.... and its time to set it free! That's all I have to say on the matter.

Works can be seen at http://www.wilsonwilliamsgallery.com/solo.htm

The‘ Paint Creature Project’.

Regarding process and practise: The‘ Paint Creature Project’ is somewhat of a unambiguous digression, though one might also say distraction. As my main focus since graduating, has been on painting, on the canvas - as is conventional.

These blithe little creatures wish to continue to evolve and winning the WWsolo award would enable them to continue doing so within the well-advised and mentored context of a well-established, contemporary art gallery. With the backing of professionals I feel the possibilities are literally endless. The paint creatures have unbounded potential and there are many tangents to be explored. The project is still in its infancy. I see whole scenarios unfolding. I see magnificent and absurd sculptural potential waiting to be developed. However, to understand this fully one must understand more about the process.

The creatures first evolved naturally and independently, they appeared one day. I’d sit, as one does, staring at my canvas and wondering what I was supposed to do next, and then from the corner of my eye; or else, as my eyes scanned the myriad of colour splattered and smudged, mixed and muted, cratered and convoluted across the landscape of my palette, and I would witness the metamorphosis of the daubs and squirts of oil paint into fantastical personified poetical little beings.

It occurred to me that the paint wanted to be free! The irony for me was in realising that this notion at once encapsulated and satirised the Modernist ‘cul de sac’ of dictates of the last century. Aware of post modern arts’ rut, in appropriating and commenting on the historical dictates of the past, in making the old new again in such a way that old authority and Other is at once questioned and celebrated, respectively- it occurred to me how well these little creatures seemed to embody all of these theories. The simplicity and poetry with which they were imbued delighted me. I realised they could be so much more, which is as they wished. They shunned the pummelling of the palette, the torture of the turpentine, and the chaos of the canvas. They screamed out to be recognised for their inner truths. “We are paint!” they declared from the plinths they crawled to.

However, at first I did not listen. So sadly, their blitheness dissipated. Some fell into a great depression; unsure of themselves they took to wandering; some attacked and adopted cannibalistic behaviour; whilst others took to the turps. Then I listened! I looked and learnt. And now I wait for the next steps to unfold. I am very excited about the potential.

I would appreciate advice and management and constructive criticism in developing the project further and help, to put my work into a context, which is both aesthetic and soundly embedded in contemporary theory. I would like exposure and support.

I see the creatures evolving into a world of scenarios possibly in much the same way as Tessa Farmers work explores the world of nature with natural found objects, so I wish to create scenarios which explore the world of art theory and human behaviour, using the visceral and anthropomorphic qualities of the paint.

Zoe Crosse

The work I am exhibiting in the show at Cultivate this month has a lot to do with allegory and myth. But as usual, in a very 'rhizomic,' beating about the bushes and following 'serendipidus' tangents, sort of way....

Although I have still been working with my usual process, referencing the photo and history, in a bid to re-invent a purpose for painting, whilst enjoying the possibilities thrown up by the materiality of the sticky stuff, I have been interested in the idea that meaning lies outside of a work.... to be post modern, one has to almost make the work meaningless? well, i couldn't help disagreeing...this time... and decided to break the rules by clearly referencing BEES! I know, it all sounds a bit wishy washy...buy hey someone has to stick up for the little guys....with out them ...we are pretty screwed!

"The honeybees are dying — and we don’t really know why. That’s the conclusion of a massive Department of Agriculture (USDA) report that came out late last week on colony-collapse disorder (CCD), the catchall term for the large-scale deaths of honeybee groups throughout the U.S. And given how important honeybees are to the food that we eat — bees help pollinate crops....."

.... little doodles dotted around ...

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Perspectives on Greatness. Gallery Archives. Letters and Diary pieces.

Zocoodizzyache was the fictional character adopted by the artist when she first set up the blog, in 2007, is that right? There were more characters to come, only she became way laid in life, momentarily distracted by her other proper job???!!!

Since then I have embarked on a writing course so future Blogs should reflect that... lol.

I think Zocoo will be resurrected, because every one needs to listen to their other selves sometimes....in awareness of course. She is full of diatribes - sweet bitternesses and absurd observations. She is not a true writer in the sense of Bronte, Dickens or Calvino...more of an observer on the side lines of a huge ball game. As she unpicks the meaning of her life , only to become sourly and acutely eaware that there is no true point, she makes art.

Zocoo has kindly agreed to allow Zoe to show her work on this blog whilst her own website is down - for reasons which need not be discussed .... !

ZocooDizzyache's Statement. May 2007

Long live ALter Ego:I will be linking the items on this page with a quest...a sad quest and possibly futile quest......it will tied together and bound by a diary and will be inspired by a pathetic need i have ....i.e. Zocoo dizzyache, to be GREAT. .....yet i am hindered by that very need and also by that incredible ability the human being has to blame all things wrong in their life on something else.... being a wretched weak minded winging woman.

The diary will embrace the futile, disparity, other , difference, the polemic and subversive , it will at times undermine itself and deconstruct itself, it will try to indulge itself in anti logic and anti reason, corrupt itself and excavate assumptions so as to shake its own roots. ...it may embrace the hysterical persons in the attic- fanatic, and investigate the place of OTHER and DIFFERENCE ....it will allow good spelling mistakes to remain as they provide insight into difference and other......from now on it will not use capital letters and will at times lapse into free flowing conciousness.....but i might change it all later...............and there might be some capitals!

Lovingly it will embrace serendipity...and accidents.....ok? this intention will no doubt be edited weekly as i gain clarity.......a sad day that may be! I will also use this blog to show case the archive of Fast Art, also known as F-Art. It is my art....i cannot paint so i make fast art.....not only am i unable to paint but i never even have time to draw , read or write...i am locked in an eternal juggling act....of complaining...and making excuses..... no doubt the work of Zoe Crosse should add a bit of interest to the blog!

F-ART. Mask

Not having the necessary time to make great art, I find I am compromised and forced to indulge in moments of cathartic fast creative acts, fast art. This kind of activity can be built into any woman’s busy regime and so whilst maintaining a steady and healthy beauty regime, (so as to remain appealing to the opposite sex), I am able to manage manage a face mask treatment and continue my usual homely duties. The peely kind of face mask is the most favourable, providing evidence of the event, as unlike other masks it is not washed away for posterity. This type of mask allows one to experience great pleasure in the peeling off of the mask as one may indulge in a satisfying sensation not so dis-similar to that of picking old scabs, for want of a better word, or layers of dead sunburnt skin. This mask is infused with my DNA and holds the key to my secret ingredients should anybody wish to clone me in the future. The peely face mask, once removed can become an effigy for yesterday's me. This mask has little in common with the idea of the mask in the usual context of mask; which ultimately conceals identity and provokes within the viewed a feeling of power and within the viewer a feeling of disempowerment. If at any point of the wearing and removing of the mask I should be viewed I imagine it is I who will feel disempowered. This mask, once removed, reveals a newer me, old skin cells are removed and bits of the old me become it. I am left to ponder how much of the mask is indeed me, as it is infused with essences of me that are no more a reality than I think I am. For where in me do I reside, I see me in the reflection and a tacit unitary reality emerges, and if I continued, if it were possible, pulling off the layers , how many mask would have to be peeled away, to excavate and find the thinking I, would I ever find it and would I be left only with a pile of translucent skins, would I be more in them than in me as tiny particles of detritus . The mask retains some of my facial contours an umbra of reality and the eye sockets are clearly discerned, they are there or not as the evidence may suggest. The eye sockets of the skull are not there but implied. There are no eyes, only nothing, nothing is seen and not seen as these two hollow spaces, as all hollows are deemed to be, are spaces really hollow, am I? Am I only in the spaces, if I am composed of hollow atoms and my thoughts sparks and waves then how can I be at all. The mask now begins to seem like a sorry reminder of death . It begins to resemble a skull or at least the image of a skull, one facet as this is all we ever see of any thing . In time I will remove another layer of me, so I may be brought closer to the abyss over which the cradle hovers shrouded in an eternal darkness. I heard that I am renewed sixty percent a month. My skin ismy largest organ and when I am not blighted by psoriasis which encourages my skin to renew every four days I am like most other humans renewed every twenty eight. I die daily and live doubly for it, but for sure this mask is as much me as I may ever manifest at all. I will build an archive of masks of me. The peeling off of the mask today has indeed been a great success, allowing the temporality of the creative act to be indulged and meditated upon and to bear fruit. This endeavour like the many others that will follow, will provide an experience not so dissimilar to a journey and so will embrace the psychological sense of transition, expectation, and openness to new experience. It is hoped that this endeavour will be occasioned by an abundance of meaningful coincidence. Should this occur, then it has indeed facilitated homage to synchronicity, the essential ingredient of greatness.zocoodizzyache 2007

Concerning the History of Greatness

The Tate Britain shows art which is considered both ‘important and GREAT’ through its method of ART HISTORY. This inherently implies standards….in the Open University Press book titled ‘Academies, Museums and Canons of Art’, text describes how ‘ high art’ was originally based on a model of art history which did not embrace post modern concerns of social ,political and anthropological facts, but rather “ reflected a tradition of connoisseurship and a study of styles and aesthetic values …..a method which placed value on individual artists related to concepts of genius and divine inspiration……the narrowest definition of important art in circulation in western societies during the 18th and 19th centuries, describes works which are perceived to be great or aesthetically superior …….The attribute of greatness is fundamental to the idea of canon…the word canon derives from Greek …..for rule or standard…..when people speak of a canon of work they usually mean a body of works that have passed a (rather ambiguously) test of value….a body of works deemed to be of indisputable quality…building a concept of high art ….linking Greek ,Roman , Renaissance Classicist, impressionist art to the modern canons such as Picasso and Cezanne….”Edited by Gill Perry and Colin Cunningham.1999.

A PROCESS OF OSMOSIS.

By looking closely at the paintings of all those artists whose work inspires me, maybe, I will discover, through a process of osmosis, secrets to make me great ! Though I will also look to those who do not inspire me, who's paintings do not appeal to me, just so as to go against my learnt reasoning or learnt tastes....or not!? Or just incase i am stupid to like that which i have learned to like, incase i have been brain washed by cultural exposure, what is it that truely defines good taste, acquired aesthetic sensibilities are questionable?

F-Art. Ball Room...see more...http://zocoodizzyache.blogspot.com/

Since January 1st 2007 I, zocoo dizzyache, have been collecting balls from the canal and river. These balls are nomadic they have no fixed abode they have been abandoned and have taken refuge in the locks and weeds where gradually they begin to blend in with their surroundings. The balls have come from far and wide and no doubt once were someones pride. Now cast asunder, cast aside they wander aimless and hopeless and gradually lose their will to live. When I was a child a ball would have been a very valuable commodity and would never have escaped ..but these days kids have it all and are of a different breed ….we would have climbed into any river any stream and fished out a stray ball ….our mothers didn’t worry about where we were or what we were up to….no ball would have gone astray back in the day. In third world countries they make foot balls with wicker or wire….. Any how, as I said I have been collecting the balls since January and creating an archive. The care taker on our estate lets me store them in the shed, I think I have well over forty, maybe fifty. They all have a little story attached to them and I like the way that each story ties up neatly with my interest in serendipity…which I actually believe is not really about coincidence….i met a woman who was once a systems analysist , I want to find out how much chance and accident really exist ……I do not think they do ….i think that every thing has a pattern it is just that our comprehension is not big enough to understand what is happening around us. These balls fall into the river and into the lock, what is the chance of that happening…must be great because I have collected so many balls…what are the chances of the balls getting stuck in a lock for months and months because the lock gate is broken and the side slip river dreid up…and then the day I finally get my Polaroid to start the project is the day …1st jan …that some clever bastard manages to work open the lock gate and free all the balls …not only that , but we have so much rain on Dec 30th that the dried up river becomes a torrent and I have to wade in and rescue what few balls are left. I manage to lose my Cartier ring in the process…but then three weeks later…for real yeah….find it in the stream!!!!!! I have watched the balls come and go and even the ones that I think have gotten away somehow make it back again. I am not sure how the ball project will end ….i may put an advert in the times ………….asking if anyone recognises the missing balls or I may cast them and make floaty copies which can form a buoyant sculpture piece in the river……….these balls have their own poetry and song to sing. They encapsulate some thing of our throw away culture…the canals were once a mode of transporting goods and wares into London, now they carry plastic bottles and balls. The canals are home to so many birds and provide a peaceful backdrop to city life where many people stroll, jog, ride their bikes , walk their dogs and row their boats….maybe my ball project will reflect some of the sadness I feel when I see how neglectful we have become of our waning natural habitats…………..here is the ball project. Today when I was collecting balls I saw Max from East enders so I got his signature……just for luck.