Conversation (in collaboration with Sarah Knill-Jones)
date > March 2012
media > 2 double-sided paintings on glass, and video
size > 2 x ( cm) + video ( x mins)
status > sold
> Following the success of our first collaboration (click here for details), I joined Sarah Knill-Jones in Baku, Azerbaijan for a week of collaborations which culmintated in an exhibition (click here for details). Conversation was the first piece we made together during that trip.
> We worked on glass, which allows acrylics, even when dry, to be reactivated, peeled, moved, crumbled up, thus widening the classically additive repertoire of painitng to one where marks can be reconfigured or removed.
> We took it in turns to paint on the two panels, adding to and editing from each other's mark in a visual but silent conversation.There were areas of constructive collaboration, others where we disagreed but always something to respond to.
> While I might have chosen to leave the subject of the paintings open, Sarah felt it was important to respond to the environment where she lives, the rapidly changing and 'edited' city of Baku. Thus we worked from photos of the city that Sarah had taken over the last 18 months. The very political and politicised editing of the city's appearance in preparation for hosting the Eurovision song contest was thus very present in my mind as was the palpable presence in the artworld of editing and outright censorship.
> Conversation acted as a test-run for 'Variable Control / Control Variable' (see related work below), in the privacy of Sarah's studio. The process was filmed and the film (see below) forms part of the work. The film and the process are more important than the resulting paintings, which are mere by-products of the conversation and were not necessarily finished when we stopped.
> The next series of images shows the two panels, sometimes from one side, sometimes from the other and different times during the conversation:
> The finished panels in the studio:
> The photos of Baku on which we based the paintings:
> The film of the process.
> For images of the work as it was shown in the show in Baku, click here:
