Admin, a Butt Plug, and the Brutality of The World
20230618 Collage
Magazine cutouts glued to premium paper, page cut from sketchbook.
210 × 297mm
2023
A couple of things before the weekend…
I’ve finally started compiling a spreadsheet of the work I’ve created this year. Yes, it’s easier to do this throughout the year (like keeping your accounts up to date), but for now, adding a couple of pieces a day will eventually get everything up to date.
What’s been nice is coming across work I’d forgotten. The above collage is a particular favourite. It has energy yet remains balanced. This combination comes from that two-finger salute, the white and green coloured cut-outs balancing each other, the scale, the various shapes, the white space, and even the dynamics of the represented objects. Bok choy, an eye, a plastic cup. Is that a butt plug?
I’ve also had this Philip Guston quote rumbling in my thoughts:
“When the 1960’s came along I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening in America, the brutality of the world. What kind of a man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything –and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue. I thought there must be some way I could do something about it. I knew ahead of me a road was lying. A very crude, inchoate road. I wanted to be complete again, as I was when I was a kid . . . I wanted to be whole between what I thought and what I felt.” (Mayer, 1991: 171).