Silent Apocalypse


Silent Apocalypse


H:200 x W:250 x 40 cm (H:79 x W:98 x D:16")

Silent Apocalypse (installation)

paper, wooden box/table, brass discs, papier mache bowls300cm x 500cm x 40 cm





Subtitled 'Aljama Veritas', the gathering of truth. This work is an open-ended enquiry into faith systems and the abuse of power. The ethos of the work is not didactic but instead, endeavors to generate a discourse around the issues /concerns.

The word "Aljama" is from the standard Jewish encyclopedia, it gives its origin and meaning as Arabic; the gathering term applied to Christian Spain and Sicily, to the community of Jews (and Moslems), sometimes also to the Jewish quarter. The latter part of the term "Veritas" of course,  comes from the Latin word for truth.

I chose to use this title initially, because it encompassed the notion of a ghetto of differing religious/cultural belief systems. The word truth is referenced in an ironic sense. I used the visual language of religious ritual to critique the notion of faith. The piece is made primarily in black and white, as it is concerned with the tendency in many cultures to approach 'others' perspectives,  in 'black and white'  and 'either - or'  terms. This takes place on both a rational and emotional level. It has resonances in the individual’s formative development as well as in national and international socio-political relations.




Silent Apocalypse / Healing bowls - part of the installationpaper, brass discs, papier mache,relief print, brass pins, engraved brass discs.35 cm diameter, 12 cm high.
Although these were a composite element of this installation - I have also exhibited these separately.


In terms of visual research the work has many influences amongst them, Roman Catholicism ( the religion I was raised in, as a child) as well as the Beatus Manuscripts, especially the Silos and the Girona
.


These early medieval illuminated manuscripts from Catalonia, N.W, Spain, I encountered while I was undertaking my Masters in Barcelona. These are fantastically highly animated illuminated texts that possess a depiction of imagined narrative in symbolically designed positive and negative spaces, in relation to the truth as they saw it. Reflected in the work, additionally, is a diverse range of influences, Moorish, northern and southern European the overall thrust of the works conceived by a multiplicity of authors/artists is of an apocryphal nature.

This piece is concerned with the tendency in many religions to approach others’ perspectives in ‘black and white’ terms. This refers to the emotional and rational realm Made using collograph + silkscreen printmaking techniques. The bowls were made of bandages.




 (detail lower right panel) collagraph chine-colle with silkscreen on Somerset black  etching paper.


BELOW IS AN EXTRACT FROM THE POETIC TEXTS WRITTEN AS PART OF THIS ARTWORK



Psychomachia -  a sad black void,  hoary absence, bereft of truth 

expanse of spiniferous shifting ice disheveled

 figured antechambers, brim with cyanide tears - small beings lost, 

cast down their bloody spinctered eyes.  

Old lines - ravaged narratives, ancient remote chants 





This was the original arrangement I made for the top of the 'table box' which was sited in the middle of the floor beneath the three hanging  panels.  This represented the idea of the 'black box' as in what is left in the wreckage of a plane crash.
It contained a series of 15 prints 30 x 30 cm, as well as the poem I wrote to accompany this piece.



Photo of the installation as exhibited at the Pump House gallery in South London where it was shown as part of an exhibition presented by the printmakers Council.  At this point the bowls were made using wax and gold pigment .



Keen the bitter walls of earths coldest most remote plain 

Grasping old bones, exude sorrow beyond their known time. 

Defrocked defaced stateless, staggering forth without name.  

Whitest light and darkest night, reflects the others flaws 

Marble cries lacerate the air in this broken and wasted place

 Hate personified seeps outwith the stifling masks 

Grace has fallen from the eyes of humanities sad and sunken face. 



Silent Apocalypse (central panels) hung using butchers hooks on tensile steel wire.






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