The title of this piece is a CS Lewis quote, it is made from found pieces by myself, my wife and my father and assembled with bought components. The meaning we give to things like pendulums, steps and random shapes fascinate me.
There are two more pieces like this in the pipeline but today I am working on a series of abstract paintings.
You can see the first two images in a series of drawings and colour sketches I will be making over the next year depicting wildlife, agricultural and domestic animals in the ‘Animals’ page.
This is a contemporary Art Exhibition which is part of Skegness’s SO Festival, above is an image of one of the pieces that can be seen, below a brief statement of the ideas behind the Exhibition. The Exhibition open on the 28th of June at the Embassy Theatre Gallery Space and runs until the 1st September.
Throughout our lives the unitary whole we see as ourselves is subject to a continual learning and re-evaluation process through our engagement with people, events, objects and concepts on a daily basis. This process, which goes on mainly unnoticed, is more apparent when we live through critical events that cause us to consciously think deeply about our views. However our core beliefs are a reassuring anchor in the ongoing process; is it the case that we seek the reassurance of communities and creeds that affirm our beliefs rather than examine contrary evidence and the potential that change can perhaps offer? How we choose the information and ideas which we will internalise or discard is a process we are all continually engaged in. James Flynn describes this filtering process as the work of the “Gatekeeper”.
“You must be the gatekeeper that filters out what is worth remembering and decides what is true or false. Otherwise you are at it’s (the modern world) mercy and drift through a life that you manage only day by day.” James R. Flynn (Professor Emeritus University of Otago, New Zealand).
When introduced to new experiences and concepts, there are consequences to accepting and internalizing new information, current values or ideas have to be adjusted. Frequently however the harder one tries to understand and legitimise the consequences within the mind just as a solution appears imminent it disappears like a mirage. There is no certainty and in the end we simply weigh up new thoughts, old values, and new possibilities and synthesize a new perspective with which we are comfortable. Like a Jigsaw with missing fragments there is never a whole picture, but that is what we imagine a completed picture as the process continually alters the shape of the jigsaw.
This thought process that refuses to offer up specific solutions, answers that cannot be defined, is the domain of the “Gatekeeper”, it is also a fertile area that art and artists can explore and use; each of the works in the exhibition through each individual artists understanding, chosen language and method of working seeks to make the viewer aware of the their thinking, the potential and concerns they see in specific areas and different perspectives on a variety of issues, at times challenging us and helping us to make sense of our experience of life through the experiences and ideas explored and illuminated by the artists.
Art has been an integral part of this process from the first prehistoric cave paintings through the Renaissance to Modern Art but artists like everyone make judgements and it is for the “Gatekeeper” within the viewer, to explore and decide the value and effectiveness of each work but through completing the conversation the viewer should hope to experience the unspoken language that can be found in all art.
Details of the other artists that will be in the exhibition can be viewed at at www.malcolmtait.co.uk/futurevents
Malcolm Tait, Artist and Maker 