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From my recent exhibition Infinite Narratives – optimism / End-Times at 139artspace. Interview by Orli Ivanov.
The concrete jungle repeatedly depicted in your drawings in a very eerie, dark and apocalyptic manner, what is your relationship with the urban landscapes and living in the jungle?
I was born in camberwell, south east london and have always lived in surrounding areas of greater london. Urbanised areas. As a boy and young man I lived nearer to woodland and closer to Kent and always felt drawn towards the woods. i don’t want to get too into talking about the city, or the “concrete jungle” too much. But I have had many dreams where I’m in a industrial area and am running away from something… The building type structures in my drawings I have taken to symbolise civilization more generally, which I think is going to go through some radical changes in the next fifty years or so. I do the drawing kind of automatically, then afterwards I relate it to my state of mind, things that are influencing me, what I am consuming, reading etc… I am trying to work from a non-anthropocentric perspective. I think a lot of art, a lot of writing is centred around the human experience, I’m trying to get away from that. the point of my recent work; optimism / end-times, is, I think that when the buildings fall, when civilisation falls and the numbers of humans – either over a long or short period – decrease, because of fuel crisis, war, poverty, climate crisis etc etc then that will be a big bonus for the rest of the nature. Ultimately urban landscapes are of not much interest to me , as what they relate is a human influence on the earth, viz: destruction.
What significance does the creative practice and creative engagement hold in your existence?
My work patterns are sporadic, but when I am working , whether writing poems, drawing, painting, producing a book, I feel most complete. I feel that the work informs me. When I work I feel its a learning process. It’s not always comfortable but I often feel I gain something internally from practicing my art. Sometimes though I think, “what’s the point?” and I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m thinking right now about how I can practice my art in a way that is practical and meaningful maybe in a political way. I haven’t figured it out yet…
What was your most surreal and vivid dream you had?
I feel this question is irrelevant generally, and dreams are highly personal reflections of our subconscious as well as images of our conscious minds. I have mentioned something on this subject relative to a previous question.
I’d like to recommend some reading which has informed my recent work; Endgame by Derrick Jensen, The Dark Mountain Manifesto, any of the films on submedia.tv ,Petrosubjectivity – de-Industrialising our sense of self by Brett Bloom.
Also, go to any local protests, join the mailing list of your local disabled activist group, do some research on the current political situation, don’t have kids, think about what comes next…
D/A/P
Saturday 9th April, 139artspace, Greenwich. Installation private view 6 – 9pm. Work will be exhibited through April.
Friday 15th April, BookArtBookshop, Pitfield St. Launch of self published collection of drawing.
Be good to see you there!
Dx
Download my most recent book
“This is not a composition, it is how I feel”
Free!
D/A/P/XX
If you would like you can purchase real copies here.
I had no say in the place I was born
and the flag raised above the land I call home is just that
a flag
cotton
or nylon
or worse
with those same colours that flew
from the pirate ships
that stole sugar and tea and spices
and the very heads of indigenous peoples
their land called home for thousands of years
re-imagined as a profit-resource
by a group who
believed so whole-heartedly
in their supremacy
that they exported their beliefs
culture and ways
and implemented them savagely
under a red, white and blue banner
rich white men, bloated by corporate greed and wealth
and an obsession with cock-power
everything that is wrong with the world
over centuries built a world for themselves
on the bones
and the bodies
of dead peoples that they viewed as irrelevant
as less than human
and now
no
i’m not proud
of a people who talk of the poor
in derogatory terms
of the vulnerable, the sick and in-need
with derision
and point out that those worse off than themselves should
“get off their arses”
and
“pull their finger out”
and that look on those fleeing
in agony
war torn countries ruined by neo-colonialism
with suspicion
that maybe they come
to steal from this land
from this people
it’s a distortion of reality that is tied to our times
it’s a lie
that was sold to you with your morning coffee
by the same rich white men
that yeah
were doing this 500 years ago
and are still doing it
and you bought it
you bought the lie
and so no
i’m not proud
you let the blood run dry
you could’ve stopped it
but
you never caused it
you never caused
the wound
you never asked me
to pour it
so i guess
it was never your responsibility
but you stood there
you watched
you held my hand
and whispered
so sweetly
and I cut me
so deeply
to show you my love
i opened myself up
i wanted you to see
how bright it was
how fast it ran
for you
my blood
i shoulda realised
i left myself empty
and blood’s better
in
than
out
i shoulda shown you
through my adult actions
how your love drove the blood
that made me
run
that made me
bright
now I’ve bled me dry
i
could’ve stopped it
i
caused the wound
i poured it
and my blood’s no good
by you
in the street
by your feet
running down
into the drain
past the chicken bones
past the dead mice twitching on the glue trap
sure the light reflects
in the crimson
and that’s nice
on a cold night in upton park
but that’s not a life.
They said
my blue sky
was aggressive and violent
my experience
the pounding heart
the breath of life
pumping through my body
pouring out into the world
is the transition
is the anger
that looks forward
is the calm after
the riots
after the fires
the outrage
the blue sky that comes
after the smoke clears
is the beauty that comes
through the blood
ours
?
after the dust settles
and we can enjoy
the blue sky
unencumbered by
aggression
and
violence
Dear friends,
I’m still about! Check out the zineography page for details on my new books… soon on my shop at illustratedself.bigcartel.com more details soon! X for now… a poem for you:
Talking about the passing of time after work one night with a colleague, an interesting idea arose which has stayed with me… I’ve been thinking a lot and here it is:
When we are young, a unit of time, say a week, is a larger portion of our lives; to a one year old, a week is 1/52 of their total time lived. As we grow up the same unit of time begins to become smaller, to a 30 year old for example a week is 1/1560 of their life. Even though the week is physically the same (in terms of the movement of the Earth around the sun) it is experientially much smaller…
The adult life is experienced through routines, and data that we have accrued during our lives. So much data that we don’t really need to experience certain things any more to do them… Think about making a cup of tea, or doing shoe laces, something that can be done with minimum thought or effort. How often do you notice the sound of an aeroplane going overhead, or the colour of a bus, or the smell of the street? Do we experience these things? Or just exist alongside un-noticed occurrences, and as part of events where we respond automatically, unthinking, to stimuli that fails to stimulate anything but a rehearsed response…
When we are younger we are seeing things for the first time, learning new things, experiencing the world around us and all the things in it.
“Mum, what’s that?”
“that’s a puddle, dear”
“what’s a puddle?”
“when it rains, puddles are formed”
(child looks up) “why does it rain?” etc…
The child is interacting with the world in many ways and thus a unit of time is heavier experientially. Mummy hardly sees the puddle really, until little Johnny asks or starts splashing…
As adults we are often “somewhere else” when experiencing the world; thinking about dinner on the bike ride home, day-dreaming about a holiday at work or having lunch with a partner, remembering how things were when you first met… In this disconnection from our immediate experience we are devaluing the unit of time experientially, and thus it passes without much notice, when we look at our lives, we say “wow, this year is going so fast!” another colleague might say “it seems to get faster the older you get…” and they’re right, it does seem to. We experience less during time; we experience time less.
The thing is to try and connect with our experiences and so really live the time we have. However, this would take some mental training, a revaluation of the value of experience and an understanding that experience is a deeply personal thing. Your green isn’t the same as my green, you have your experience of the colour green and I mine. Bacon frying in a pan has physical properties; the heat, the evaporation of liquid within the meat, and there are physical occurrences in us as we see the meat change colour, hear the sizzling sounds of its frying, smell the particles in the air around us or feel the heat of the hob. However, your experience of these occurrences is something just for you, and mine for me… The tendency is to accept a given value of the experience of an everyday occurrence and to not notice them at all, a bus is just red; that is it. Occasionally something from this order of events or occurrences will get through and we’ll experience them, often a smell; a certain perfume in the air while walking in the street will evoke an image in memory, maybe I smile look around, and notice other things about my surroundings, now I interact with what is around me psychically, and experience it more fully…
Seeking experiences out of our routines, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, experiencing things we haven’t before, or trying to experience them in different settings, with others we’ve never shared these experiences with before… Or even better; learning something new, being active, engaging with the world around us mean we don’t ignore the passing time, but we really live it… then who will care how quickly it seems to go by?
Love all round.
DAP
xxx
This is a poem. It started when I was reading this book in the bath called “Scripts People Live” by Claude Steiner, it is a book on the subject of Transactional Analysis. It is very interesting to think about why we behave the way we do and why we make the choices we make, and I have been reading a lot on this subject and it has been informing a lot of my poetry and abstract drawing.
There are lots of people in lots of difficult situations, bad relationships, jobs they hate, drink and drug problems, depression etc, some people don’t think they’re good enough for love, or they don’t deserve to be happy, or maybe they have become comfortable in their situations because thats how they’ve learned to live and its more safe than making a change. Basically these are “Not OK” positions… Either they feel “Not OK” or that other people that are “Not OK” or both!
I was feeling a bit down, so as I read I started to think “It’s OK to love, it’s OK to be happy…” I laughed! Then I started to say them out loud. It felt really good! I was giving myself permission to get what I want!! So, I wrote them down and riffed out a drawing on the subject and relating to stuff I have been thinking about recently…That it’s Okay to get what you want, Okay to be happy and Okay to love.
These are the scans of the work, the photos of the booklet are in my Zineography page on this blog…
Love all round
DAP
xxx
For Julie Kane’s Colorless Green Ideas Zine (she is still taking submissions), but for a larger piece I’m working on also… I’ll speak more about the metaphor later. DAP x
