95. AZIAH LUSALA: A SPACE BETWEEN FAITH AND REALITY.
Aziah Lusala, Black Jesus, 2023, Oil on Canvas, 100cm x 100cm. London. Private Collection.
‘Ultimately, my work reminds me — and anyone who views it — that no matter how difficult or limiting life may seem, there’s always the potential to transform, to grow, and to create something that transcends the struggle. It’s a testament to perseverance, faith, and the power of self-belief.’ A.L.
I remember meeting you through your work - the first time was in a crit I think, where you presented a series of material tests using black acrylic plastics - I remember sensing that there was a depth to what you were doing and yet at first the impression was of a reflected surface... the contradiction was fascinating.
Entering university, I understood that what I was saying and creating wouldn’t immediately resonate with everyone.
I knew my perspectives might feel unfamiliar or even unapproachable, but I wanted to find a way to introduce myself and my practice in a way that could connect with others while staying true to its essence.
I still vividly remember something you said to me during that crit — it has stayed with me ever since. You told me, “You need to become the expert in your own practice.” At first, I didn’t know how to process that.
My initial reaction was, “If I’m the expert, why did I even come here?” But over time, I came to understand it differently. Being the expert didn’t mean I had all the answers — it meant I had a responsibility to bring others into the world of my practice.
I needed to become the teacher, guiding people to engage with the depth and complexity of my work and how it intertwines with my life.
The Black Jesus painting halts the viewer - the sorrow in the eyes is extraordinary - it is incredibly deep in terms of emotion and yet has been created with a method that feels as if the paint has been pushed and pulled down the surface - when it was shown in The Saatchi gallery earlier this year I kept returning to it - like a magnet...
The story behind Black Jesus is deeply personal and rooted in my upbringing. My father is a pastor, so faith was always a central part of my life. I spent much of my childhood in the church, but I also grew up in the streets, where community and loyalty to one another were everything.
We gave our all to our community—it was almost like an act of worship. But the activities we indulged in, the things we did to survive or feel connected, wouldn’t be seen as acceptable to others.
Black Jesus captures that tension. His sorrowful eyes reflect the weight of those contradictions—the struggle between sin and redemption, between faith and reality.
The method of painting — the way the paint feels like it’s been dragged, pushed, and pulled — is intentional. It mirrors the push and pull of those experiences, the turbulence and the beauty that coexist in that environment.
You are about to leave art school, how do you feel now and what have been your signals within that period of time that you will take forward?
As I prepare to leave the Royal College of Art, I feel pride, gratitude, and a sense of unfinished work. My time here has been transformative, pushing me to grow in ways I never imagined. While I’ve accomplished so much, my life remains complex, and getting to this point hasn’t been easy. Right now, my focus is on crossing this milestone while preparing for the next steps.
One of my next steps is traveling to Congo to reconnect with my roots.
My grandfather was a king in Basankusu, Congo, and as one of the last males in our lineage with a claim to that throne, I feel a deep responsibility to explore my heritage. This journey is about grounding myself in my identity and carrying that connection into my work and future.
When I return, I plan to complete my master’s and build on the foundation I’ve established at the RCA. The most important lessons I’ll take with me are self-belief and attention to detail — trusting my instincts and making intentional decisions about materials and research to add depth and meaning to my work.
Leaving the RCA isn’t an end but the start of something greater. I’m proud of what I’ve achieved — not just for myself, but for my daughter, my community, and as an example of what’s possible. I’m ready to carry these lessons and my legacy forward into the next chapter.
Time is an important element to your practice as an artist…
Time is central to both my life and my practice. The eight years I spent away from civilisation profoundly shaped my understanding of time — not as a limitation, but as a foundation for growth.
During that period, I rediscovered my passion for art, and this duality of constraint and transformation continues to inform my work.
In 2014, while incarcerated, I created ‘They Got the Key but I’m Still Free.’
At 19, I didn’t fully grasp its significance, but over time, its meaning has deepened.
It now feels like a prophecy, connecting my past struggles to my present growth and future possibilities.
Time gives my work context, allowing it to reflect a broader journey.
It acts as a thread linking past, present, and future, showing how every moment adds to a larger narrative of identity and transformation.
If you look at the work as a whole, what do you feel it tells you?
Each of my works is a chapter, and together they form a book — a story of my journey from incarceration to creation against all odds.
Each piece holds a fragment of my experiences, from moments of confinement and struggle to breakthroughs of clarity and freedom. If I look at my body of work as a whole, it tells a story of resilience, redemption, and self-discovery.
It’s a dialogue between the past and present: my early works carry the raw emotions of someone trying to make sense of their reality, while my recent pieces reflect a deeper understanding of myself and my place in the world.
Together, these works show how time and reflection can sculpt pain into meaning and a personal story into something inspirational.
But more than that, my work is a key — a way to inspire people who grew up in situations like mine. It’s about showing the path I’m trying to navigate to leave that life behind and how far I’ve come in doing so.
Ultimately, my work reminds me — and anyone who views it — that no matter how difficult or limiting life may seem, there’s always the potential to transform, to grow, and to create something that transcends the struggle. It’s a testament to perseverance, faith, and the power of self-belief.
‘Black Jesus’ was presented in the exhibition ‘From The One To The Many’ in September 2024, at Saatchi Gallery, London.
CAN I BE HONEST by Aziah Lusala.
94. ADAM KNIGHT: A SPACE BETWEEN SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL.
Jencksianagram, The Cosmic House - LONDON.
Adam Knight, Cosmic Viewer (Winter), Various Dimensions, Laminate card and convex lenses.
Please introduce Jencksianagram?
Jencksianagram is an exhibition at The Cosmic House in London. The House is a Grade 1 listed building designed by Maggie Keswick and Charles Jencks modified from a late-Georgian house. The Cosmic House remains one of the most notable examples of post-modern architecture in the UK. It is currently used as an archive, museum and exhibition space open to the public. Jencksianagram comprises a number of works: stereographic slides, a set of viewers, a small publication and sculpture. The title combines Jencksiana – which is Charles’ invented symbol used throughout The Cosmic House– with stereogram: two similar images mounted side-by-side. Since late 2023, I’ve been a regular visitor and researcher to the Architectural Library. The Library contains Charles’ vast architectural slide collection which he used and reused to illustrate his lectures and publications. I spent many months methodically viewing every one of the thousands of slides in the Slidescrapers. In doing so I identified near-duplicates in the archive and used them to assemble stereograms – a pair of almost identical two-dimensional images that when displayed side-by-side in a stereoscopic viewer, is optically perceived as a three-dimensional image.
Adam Knight, Cosmic Viewers (Summer and Winter) and Cosmic Slide, Photo: Thierry Bal.
The accompanying book which supports the exhibition, 'Hold all Holes', is beautiful, in production and also in text. Please can you expand upon the notion of 'a slackened gaze' within the context of the exhibition.
Thank you. I’m always hesitant to include texts as work within exhibitions. I feel there can be an uneasy relationship between writing as poetic inquiry and my tendency to outline a method or rationale for the work. However the silence of the archive initiated a desire to speak aloud, whereupon I fastidiously recorded voice notes as I left the archive each week. These fragmented meditations helped structure ‘Hold All Holes’. The publication’s title is from a correspondence between the architect Terry Farrell and his clients Maggie and Charles early on in The Cosmic House’s construction. The phrase ‘Hold all Holes’ was capitalised and underlined, recommending a pause to construction work. For me this was an important spatial and temporal methodology. It helped me to think about ellipsis within the archive. Charles identifies the intrinsic quality of postmodern architecture as having double meaning. ‘To hold’ being both a command to wait and an act of support. Charles was fascinated by the power of metaphors in understanding architecture; he speaks eloquently about this in relation to Le Corbusier’s chapel in Ronchamp. Charles admired the ability of postmodern architecture to codify and play with different readings. In English, there is a similar metaphorical richness around vision and visuality; ‘tunnel vision’, ‘soft focus’, ‘blind-spot’ and so on. So going back to your citing of the term ‘Slackened Gaze’, I wanted to set up a very particular way of viewing the exhibition. The demand of stereoscopic viewing is to resist direct looking and to occupy a lucid state of gazing, a practice analogous to hearing rather than listening. Even though the Cosmic Viewers are an apparatus enabling specific viewing to take place, the experience is still reliant on the visitor optically completing the work. So this too becomes a kind of allegory for engaging with the work of art: to be aware of the conditions and structures enabling the experience.
Adam Knight, Cosmic Viewer - (Autumn) and Cosmic Slide.
Within this site specific exhibition, the sense of atmosphere is very pronounced. How have you expressed this within the curation of Jencksianagram?
I read a recent review of Tai Shani’s exhibition
‘The World to Me Was A Secret: Caesious, Zinnober, Celadon, and Virescent’ – also on show at The House – saying something to the effect that sites don’t get more specific than The Cosmic House. Having worked with sites and situations for the past fifteen years, I feel the practice benefits from having a relationship with a strong context that often the built world provides.
I deeply enjoy the process of bringing to bear my sensibilities and dispositions alongside existing frameworks and structures. There’s a lot of figuring out, being responsive and attentive to where certain interests may take you. I wrote my MA thesis on the importance of distancing the work from the place of production to the site of presentation. Although I no longer have such a dogmatic position, in a way I’ve understood my work through this dichotomy. This is more pronounced where archival objects remain inside the controlled environment of the archive. My visits would often coincide with guided tours of The Cosmic House. As visitors entered the Architectural Library I would be present at the desk researching. In this setting I had a strong sense that I was ‘performing research’, that is to say participating in the life of The House. I became more and more conscious of the Library as a multi-layered space. I’d have passing conversations with other researchers and ongoing discussions with Archivist and Collections Manager Anna McNally. All these activities got me closer to how I imagined the Library was used when Charles was alive - a place of debate, conversation and wonderment. The original intention for the Cosmic Viewers was to install them on the light-tables in the Architectural Library. The tables operate as windows looking down into the Summer Room. It's a clever piece of design where aspects of the room mediate between environments (similarly the undulating roof designed by Maggie originally followed the curvature of the hanging branches above). The decision to present the work in the room adjacent to the Library (Maggies Study) helps to retain certain atmospherics but without being reliant on the specifics of the Library. In the exhibition, the lightboxes play an important role in illuminating the stereograms. A key gesture was to use a warmer light in the boxes which felt more in keeping with the surroundings of the house, rather than the museological cool blue that I was working with in the Library.
Adam Knight, Cosmic Viewers (Spring and Autumn) and Cosmic Slide, Photo: Thierry Bal.
You mention the notion of boxes holding artifacts, which were not originally intended for that use as being a 'surrogate object'... I found this to be fascinating...
Charles' voice and approach is so strong and present throughout the house, the archive and related materials. In 1972 Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver wrote a manifesto on Adhocism. In it they advocate an approach towards the improvisational by using things to hand to solve design problems. The Architectural Library begins as an ambitious conceptual organisation for Charles’ collection, with each book case designed around a particular architectural style: baroque, classicism and so on. As the library expanded according to his needs and interests, these systems started to break down, or rather became corrupted - additional shelves and compartments were installed to accommodate the growing collection.
The ‘Slidescrapers’ are two 5-foot high towers that are dedicated to his image collection. Each metal drawer is tightly packed with varying configurations and contortions of slide boxes. I could see that some slides were housed in after dinner mint packaging. The boxes’ scale and dimensions neatly stack 35mm mounted slides. In one of our early meetings, Anna emphasised that the word archive has a double-meaning: archive as the both collection and the architecture it resides in. The Library, Slidescrapers and slide boxes exemplify this. What I found fascinating was that in places, different kinds of tape were used to reinforce and repair the boxes. The same tape was also used to crop visual details in the slides that Charles included in his teaching materials. Tape becomes a common motif of repair, maintenance and attention. The context of the exhibition arrives at the moment where institutional structures emerge around the archive, and the tensions between Charles’ idiosyncrasies and archival demands play out.
Adam Knight, Cosmic Viewer (Spring) and Cosmic Slide.
Within your research within this specific archive - have you discovered any unanswered questions within Charles Jencks life's work?
The Architectural Library constitutes a unique body of knowledge that challenges orthodox approaches to archiving and digitisation. I enjoy aspects of research that reveal things that would have otherwise been ignored or overlooked. There is an interplay between the formalities of the collection and playful elements of Charles’ identity. Early on in my research, I came across a torn article from a magazine. On one side was a review of an exhibition on East Asian ceramics at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and on the back an advertisement for Medite - manufacturer of Medium Density Fibreboard (used throughout The Cosmic House). Both pages would have interested Charles equally, but what do you focus on in this instance? Furthermore I’ve come to know Charles via anecdotes or through conversations with those who work at The Cosmic House. For instance, the challenge of deciphering his handwriting or how a recurring set of initials required decoding to understand their purpose. In response to the work, I was asked by Lily Jencks (daughter of Charles, The Keeper of Visions and Chairwoman) to what extent Charles was annotating his slides.
I recognise in that question I hold certain insights into the collection that others may not have, even those who were very close to him. I’ve been the only researcher to look through every slide in the Slidecrapers. The slide pairs in the exhibition would have been taken sequentially, allowing us to share his experiences of time between the two photographs. In this way, the work opens up a dialogue with Charles. My time as a researcher and subsequent producer of Jencksianagram resulted in my admission into the digital archive as a ‘named figure’ (alongside previous artists). In a minor way the project becomes part of the history of the House. The reciprocity of archive to artwork is very interesting to me, and hopefully is in keeping with the spirit of how Charles envisioned the way his work and The Cosmic House could be interpreted.
The Cosmic House Jencks Foundation, 19 Lansdowne Walk, London, W11 3AH.
93. JIL SANDER - A SPACE BETWEEN COMPASS AND COURSE.
Jil Sander by Jil Sander - Prestel.
Jil Sander photographed by Francesco Scavullo, 1980.
Covered with a Warholian screenprint - off set to reveal the multiple layers of self. As screens or shadows suggest the many mirrors to Jil Sander's gaze - Part elusive Garbo, part pragmatic engineer.
- A gaze that stares out to an unseen horizon line, as to be lit by the luna haze of a Hiroshi Sugimoto seascape. Calm yet witness of a space between storms, to chart a course where a map remains closed, and the compass is self: Jil Sander by Jil Sander.
To trace a finger across these pages is to sense a pulse, a vein beneath the skin as a scored fold gives choice to adapt this chronicle of time, this surface of still - A book of feeling over instruction - where images are chosen by the beat of a heart - the pink matter over the need to be understood by the grey.
As in the architectural spaces depicted in print, so too does this object convey an intention of space. On opening the cover or door to a volume on a life lived through the appreciation of the sparsely furnished. The light-filled atriums of Sander’s stores - allowed for contemplations of identity to take flight and perch before purchase. So too do the minimally furnished pages in Irma Booms’ monograph on the German designer - blurs as plasma paused - more flat screen than full bleed. As borderless pages open - allowing the viewer to select combinations of colour, akin to the quiet act of physically contemplating Sander’s expansive collections - as client collaboration - in the 'We' over the 'I'.
Archival film footage - paused to remember amorphous - to focus - as edges soft as pastel impressions smudge gentle memories. Cropped in as evidence - to study the erogenous of a design through glimpses caught - of elbow, nape of neck, undulation of throat.
Softly printed portraits reminiscent of Gerhard Richter paintings form an emotive focus felt - clearer than the digital, richer for the saturation of hue - allowing the eye to glaze upon a past lived - An ode to silence - presented as art - where to fall in love stills the world from its crashing chaos - signals from the noise - within this printed atmosphere - all makes sense and equilibrium is achieved.
A kindness of colours pigment a ream of pages - which occasionally jolt for a warning shot of lapis, cobalt, ruby or gold. The body bare of faceted stones and yet is touched with an artist's palette, tender and private. As with Josef Albers, whose colour block paintings are sensed within the occasional wide borders of white, generous as a foulards edge, to a block of egg yolk yellow or vermillion.
Clothes cut as paper planes stitched in felted sheaths - hover on angular limbs - as Naum Gabo cuts expanses of metal - Sander selects poplin, leather or wool to fathom flatness to form.
Solarised images occasionally blink from pages as to signify the exactitude of a surface understood as blueprint - as garment - as plans become construction.
The sensual surprise of touch of an occasional page of printed plastic breaks the mass of porous papers - as the cellophanes of Peter Lindbergh's film strips - a processing in between moments caught - wet from a dark room before the solidity of permanence. As with her clothes, Sander knows that celluloid lasts longer than a season - and so these pages are further testament of a directorial knowledge of cinemas’ ageless lasting.
And so Sander protects her uniformed following with a knowing pragmatism that beckons to eras long passed - in the precision of cut and construction, reassuring the wearer with an instilled knowledge. There is a maternal manner in the way ideas are proposed - both on the body and off - in the no-nonsense approach to her work as a designer and in impeccable translation into book form - of gesture over instruction. An offering to those who speak through garments engineered to appear simple for the predilection of the complex. Cuffs hover knuckles - coats swathe shoulders, knees break through double-faced plackets with the rhythm of walking to beguile the viewer and empower the wearer.
The science of seduction, cooly invisible, even impenetrable to the most yet yielding and lucid to the few - whose loyalty is in realising the self.
'The designer is not one to shy away from such classic erotic cues as transparency and the color red. The cut, by contrast, is anything but provocative. Succinct in its approach, it gives the female body the freedom to go unconcealed without making itself vulnerable to expectations.' J.S.
Jil Sander by Jil Sander published by Prestel
Special Thanks Kate Luxton - Prestel.
92. ON KAWARA: A SPACE BETWEEN SENDING AND RECEIVING.
On Kawara: Date Paintings, David Zwirner - LONDON.
On Kawara, JUNE 8, 1966, 1966 from "Today," 1966-2013
"Hurricane Alma has mounted to 100-mile-an-hour peak winds and is moving toward Cuba." Acrylic on canvas 6 x 34 inches (66 x 86.4 cm). Signed and dated verso Accompanied with artist-made box. Image courtesy of David Zwirner.
‘In a certain sense the phrase "I am still alive" can never be sent as it cannot be received by the addressee instantaneously...It is only valid at the very instant that it is being written, and in the very next second it no longer is a certainty. If the addressee receives the telegram a few hours or days later and reads it, he merely knows that the sender was alive at the very instant the telegram was sent. But when he is reading the telegram, he is totally uncertain if the content of the text is still relevant or if it is still valid The difference, the small displacement between sending and receiving, is that particular unseizable glimpse of the presence of the artist. Likewise, it is a sentence of self-reassurance..."I am still alive." The activity of telling oneself and the world "I am still alive."
O.K. 1970.
On Kawara: Date Paintings. David Zwirner 24 Grafton Street, London. Until January 25, 2025.
Special Thanks: Sara Chan.
91. ZHEKUN WANG: A SPACE BETWEEN MIND AND MATTER.
‘When I play music… sometimes I like to drag a pause… breathe a bit more… I think in some pauses, there’s a lot to reflect upon. Music is very good for that. It creates the perfect space for you to imagine, to contemplate, to feel, to anticipate, and sometimes even to fear.’ Z.W.
Zhekun Wang, ‘Water Plants’, July 2019, Margate. Image courtesy of the artist.
The first conversation we had was about impressionism and the notion of translating emotion through different media. I remember learning from you about how Chopin was using notes in a connected way to how the impressionists were using paint... and that idea was radical to me…
I’m glad you recall this previously discussed connection between music and emotion in the context of impression. During the Romantic period in music, many musicians, including Chopin, composed with deep emotion poured into their pieces. These complex emotions were expressed through various elements such as musical arrangements, technicalities, and sometimes even lyrics. However, in Chopin’s compositions specifically, I sense an impressionistic quality that reminds me of early 1900s Impressionist paintings. This intrigues me because these two distinct art forms seem to emotionally paint, to some degree, the same kind of image.
Chopin’s compositions are known for their poetic nature and the way passages are arranged. For instance, in one of his ballads, you might find yourself sulking over a forlorn lullaby one moment, only to be transported to a jumpy Minute Waltz the next — and the transition feels seamless. What’s fascinating is the lack of a defined boundary between these passages. They all interflow organically, like an arm growing naturally from a shoulder.
This idea of interflow connects to the way Impressionist painters use colour strokes. There are no defined lines, only blocks of colour layered to form an image. These paintings capture the atmosphere rather than specific silhouettes. That’s the same emotional quality I experience when listening to Chopin’s pieces.
For your MA - you studied fashion design and yet you did not make clothes despite a background in pattern cutting, you work in gaming design... what do you feel are the linking skills you have learned to realise your instincts?
I think both practices are designed around the idea of the body. One physical and one digital. In gaming, I am specifically attracted to designing environment art. Making garments provides a bodily experience with clothes, while in gaming, it is the environment that contributes to the player’s bodily experience. It’s the level design and set dressing that make the player feel transformed within the game. I really enjoy that.
That is also the link between the two skills I have learned. Additionally, when making clothes, as you mentioned, pattern cutting is a craft, a process of shaping an object with paper and fabric in 3D space. This skill of 3D modeling, creating forms and shapes, directly translates to the making of game assets.
I think of those specific shades of red and blue when I think of your work, how you distilled such concentrated depth of feeling within them... can you contemplate what they mean to you now?
I link Klein blue to what Derek Jarman’s said about colour. It is a colour of hope. And I think it’s a really positive message. The red was inspired by Almodovar’s film Volver, and a few others that feature this scarlet red quite a lot. It’s passionate, strong, masculine, sexy, and humorous sometimes.
Zhekun Wang, ‘Stratus’, December 2021, London. Image courtesy of the artist.
The mood of science fiction holds a certain poise within your work - the sense of space - and the feeling of suspension - and the connection to how you play the piano - how the notes are suspended....
I think leaving some space between things is a good practice in life in general hehe. At least, that’s how I feel for now. I like science fiction because it always carries that feeling of possibility and space in between. Also, there’s a sense of isolation — or maybe solitude.
When I play music, sometimes I like to drag a pause a bit longer, breathe a bit more. I think in some pauses, there’s a lot to reflect upon. Music is very good for that. It creates the perfect space for you to imagine, to contemplate, to feel, to anticipate, and sometimes even to fear.
Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, Borodin, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff—almost all classical composers include, in their pieces, moments to catch a breath. Oh, maybe not Beethoven, because he’s quite intense. I love him for a different reason.
I think suspending a few notes is always more interesting than playing them all in a single breath.
There is much fear surrounding AI and how it will affect the creative industries - what is your view on this?
From personal experience, AI has been helpful so far. However, I work in creative tech rather than programming or research so to some extent it isn’t that much of a direct connection. It is the secondary product. I don’t think people need to be scared by AI in this industry. It’s just a tool for making things easier. It creates “new” things because it just works faster for the same results. I think the core part of it cannot be replaced by AI, especially in art and creative work. For example, I recently watched ‘Arcane’ Season 2 - all the environments inside are hand-painted. AI is not responsible for this. The composition, the colours, the music, the dialogues between characters… It is just one example that great artwork still needs a lot of human-ness. And with the booming of AI, I think it really makes the creative industry even more important than ever before.
Zhekun Wang, September 2023, Taklamakan Desert, image courtesy of the artist.
90. FRANCIS BACON: A SPACE BETWEEN SMOKE AND MIRROR.
Francis Bacon, Human Presence. National Portrait Gallery - LONDON.
Francis Bacon, Head of A Boy, 1960. Oil on Canvas. 61 × 44.5 cm. Private Collection.
An emerald swathe of wool on skin - a body swung - as orb of the molten solidify to shatter.
A subject waits - as time ticks on to a discourse out of sight in a background palette of grays.
To recoil within such conversations - as to be poised as a hostage within a frame - held through a tension sustained through longing, estranged, irrational - irresistible - as boundaries crossed and desires held.
To wreak havoc through the torment of worth - confined confidence of self - veiled and volatile within a distraction of predatory colour. A murmuring of bruises - beguile as violence is sustained - as open scars - hostile to heal.
Slaughtered pinks - demand and deter - as meat slapped to marble - awaiting a broken blade to sever, wipe and cherish.
As to trespass a soul’s soil and obsessively wrench and gouge - feast until fed - drink until drunk. As to climb into such cavities - internal architecture bled - raw to ruin - the bodily despicable. Follies of flesh viewed to pull and twist - to snap as a pincer gaze. A moment held - as a fish gasps for air - hooked lip held, body beats to flash such impossible greens as iridescent scales - to shimmer as eyes fix on such brilliance.
Within a no-mans-land where women are unseen - confiscated confessions lay alert within a dormancy of wanting. As to fight such urges as to bop and weave - to risk all for a chance to be confronted - alas these battles are never won - as to remain imprisoned within distorted depictions - as the smoke clears the mirrors remain.
Letter from Francis Bacon to Lucian Freud, written in Malta, dated 15 April 1964. National Portrait Gallery.
Francis Bacon, Human Presence. National Portrait Gallery. Until 19 January 2025.
Special thanks: Perry Stewart.
89. RACHEL WHITEREAD: A SPACE BETWEEN MAKE AND NEED.
FREIZE LONDON 2024.
Rachel Whiteread, Untitled (Entrace Lilac) 2024.
'…I also work on these white elephants… - like House or Untitled Monument - things that are incredibly ambitious, take an awful long time to do, involve a lot of controversy, an awful lot of people, and don't make any money particularly, but it's just because I need to make them. ' R.W.
88. FRANCISCO DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES: A SPACE BETWEEN FLIGHT AND FALL.
Uncanny Visions: Paula Rego and Francisco de Goya, Holburne Museum - BATH.
Francisco de Goya Y Lucientes (1746-1828) A way of flying, plate 13 from The Follies (1815-24). c.1854. Etching, aquatint and possibly drypoint on paper. Trustees of the British Museum.
To etch an image grazed into a surface of burnished scratches.
to colour by hand - as to brush sugar washes in hues of a knowing childhood - threaten nightmares - sung as lullabys...
Bulls loom lightly - to glide as helium-filled or gravity-free within a constellation of freckled forgottens. Their feathered tails gentle - their eyes watchful.
Rego's giant cat and silhouetted fiddle pluck a night sky as a dog barks in silence and a saucer scuttles into a foliage of fools.
As a giant grimaces - as features sliced from a chalken cliff - beam brightly, moonlit glimmeringly against the inky darkness of the surrounding night. Impress a page, as a Torreadors' cape held forth in provocation, its drenched surface - gleaming within its sodden swathes. Such contrasts depicted through a mastery of monochrome choices - tenderly assertive within asymmetric compositions crafted to jarr.
Monsters lunk within the faces of the familiar, seen again as if in disguise, a herd of humans morph into one gloop - as a frogspawn swells - hatched from a spell. Lurking within the ghostly fog of the background of a drama - as if a distraction from a destined threat. Gossiped within a swirl of whispers. Goya's loyalty to such hazes - to the grey areas of the in-between - of the lingering uncertainty and taught atmospheres of change - remind of the impending - as within the exhausted confusion of a dreamscape where minutes stretch as the threads of ink awaiting commitment to page.
A merry folly of folk - spongeily squelch and sway within a ring - as a slither of offal squeaks - to glisten under starlight and to imagine colours of roots - pulled from the earth - oozing with the sodden - screaming from the severance.
To pool - a slapping of splashes - to slither a stream - run a river to flow into an ocean of sweated fevers and sticky fears.
And then to breathe in the cool air of a higher realm - within that degrade of scattered stars - as to look down on that midnight ceremony where hacked plaster heads morph a madness.
As Rego's rosed rendition - a rotation of parts - giggles into the round as a drunken sway - holding hands with strangers - who blur the scene in view - with the choreographed abandon of Bausch - danced in the tightly laced shoes of Sundays.
A commune of the extracted - tethered in their body bagged cassocks, scissored heads as ravaged plumes - necks framed with the ruffs - drawn to choke as strings of a sack - as the countless forms stacked as sculptures in storage. This procession of chattering - forms a whole, as a foam of an inhuman seascape awaiting a return - to engulf and dissolve.
Uncanny Visions: Paula Rego and Francisco de Goya, Holburne Museum - BATH. Until 5 January 2025.
87. SULEYMAN WELLINGS-LONGMORE: A SPACE BETWEEN PROTEST AND RESISTANCE.
Suleyman Wellings-Longmore, ‘Behind Enemy Lines’.
‘The most important signaling moments in my life have followed immediately after some form of disappointment. I’m grateful that in the wake of unsuccessful job applications, heartache and uncertainty, opportunities have presented themselves that have in some way propelled me forward.’ S.W.L.
Please introduce your work 'Behind Enemy Lines’?
This work interrogates how power intervenes in language to silence and fix meaning, whilst simultaneously highlighting the way the disenfranchised weaponize language to challenge the status quo. James Baldwin said, “to be born into the English language is to realize that the assumptions by which the language operates are your enemy”, in detailing the inherent racial bias in our linguistic frameworks. Inspired by the notion of word play – who has the power and privilege to play with words, to write these linguistic rules? – 'Behind Enemy Lines’ reimagines these rules, drawing from the aesthetics of the board game Scrabble, the research of cultural theorist Stuart Hall and the poetry of Benjamin Zephaniah. Inviting the viewer to reflect on how new perspectives can challenge fixed meanings, Baldwin’s quote can be read from one side of the work when viewed from the right angle, whilst Zephaniah’s pixelated face can be seen from the other side. Concealed within the work is a speaker system through which I perform a live mix of a soundscape with audio by Baldwin, Zephaniah, Hall, anchored in dub music – a genre of protest and resistance.
I was immediately very intrigued that you are a human rights lawyer and also a practicing artist...
I balance my legal practice – now centred on migration, protest and more recently, artist rights – alongside my creative practice. Reconciling my social values with my career as a corporate lawyer motivated me to begin creating several years ago. I started to champion my heritage through my art in resistance to feeling othered in my professional and personal environment. I was based in Paris at the time, a city which felt simultaneously inspiring and lonely. On a volunteering trip to Lebanon, assisting asylum seekers fleeing ISIS in Syria, I made my first painting, and I continued on my return to France, painting canvases on my bedroom wall and clay sculpting at a gallery nearby. The lockdown allowed more time to expand my portfolio. Keen to work on cases that empowered others and better aligned with my principles, I pivoted full time into human rights law via a masters at Harvard Law School. It was in America that my artistic practice, which until then combined figuration of Black forms with optical illusions to explore magnificent and mundane moments of my experience, started to be directly informed by the human rights material I was studying. These topics included international migration, critical race theory and criminal injustice. Whilst my artwork now draws from a wider set of influences, my creative and legal practices are united in that, through both I strive to create a positive impact beyond myself. There are also sometimes interesting overlaps between the two - I am part of a campaign called ‘Art Not Evidence’ which seeks to increase the bar for admissibility of creative expression, especially drill/rap lyrics as evidence, a process which disproportionately affects marginalised communities. Protecting the rights of artists is at the nexus of the two practices I hold dear.
You were is the US at a turning point in modern history, how did being there affect you and your practice?
Everything felt pretty historic. I had originally been accepted to study in 2020 but deferred for a year after Covid-19 forced Harvard to take all courses online. Trump was still in power at this point. But when I arrived in 2021, Biden was in, the world was slowly reopening, and things seems a little optimistic. However, soon into my time on campus we saw photos of U.S. border patrol assaulting Haitian migrants at the border, the leak of the U.S Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the appointment of Ketanji Jackson and continued fallout of January’s insurrection, to name a few pivotal moments. I think being a student – learning, challenging, collaborating – encourages an introspection that can leave you feeling the world can and ought to be changed for the better and with its history, influence and network, studying at Harvard Law School definitely developed the belief that perhaps I could be an agent of this change. The discussions, movements, and communities I was a part of in the U.S. encouraged me to be bold in how I applied law and created art to bring about this impact.
The next issue of M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) focuses on signals, what have been the key signaling moments within your own life?
The most important signaling moments in my life have followed immediately after some form of disappointment. I’m grateful that in the wake of unsuccessful job applications, heartache and uncertainty, opportunities have presented themselves that have in some way propelled me forward. In a way, each signal is linked the one before. I was selling advertising space on the back of bus tickets after I graduated from the University of Leeds, trying – and failing – to get a graduate job. I wasn’t very fulfilled. After a particularly comprehensive spate of rejections, I took a leap of faith (and what little I had saved) and travelled across Brazil before and during the 2014 World Cup. The experience of being there, travelling by myself for the first time, and meeting people from around the world, proved seminal. I began working on a novel, my first art project, and returned to secure a job to be trained as a lawyer. A few years later, I was in Lebanon trying to bolster my human rights experience in anticipation of a career switch in the face of job insecurity, when I stumbled upon an art store/café in Beirut. The owner and I got on well, and I eventually bought a canvas and started painting, not thinking where it would go. A few years later, I was at Harvard and just opened my first institutional exhibition before receiving yet more rejections (I’m a good lawyer, I promise) after a very gruelling recruitment process – this time to become a human rights barrister. I was also nursing a tender heart after a relationship breakdown. In reassessing my future amidst these changes, I decided it was now or never to apply to art school and commit to further expanding my creative practice. I did and here I am. I think the more you listen to, and act on, the signals around you, the better your confidence and sense of timing gets. These examples perhaps don’t represent concrete signals telling me to do something explicitly, but they have acted as crossroad moments from which my life has taken a different path. In each case, I have centred my own happiness in the face of external pressures, which is perhaps the recurring signal I strive to listen out for.
I was really interested in what you said about how your instinct kept pulling you back to art...
Following my instinct is integral to my art practice, in both carving out the space to make artwork and the actual creative process itself. It was being attune to what I knew felt right – without always being able to articulate the exact reasoning - that first compelled me to begin making art. I knew I wanted to write the novel I had in my mind, to paint the image I held in my thoughts, to sculpt the form I saw when I closed my eyes. I’m a firm believer that you don’t always need to understand the reason for creation or appreciation. When you are scrolling across radio stations and hear a song you like, you don’t necessarily need to be cognisant of the context, history and relevance of the song – you just know you like it. Yes, deep down you may be processing these thoughts, but I think it’s enough to simply want to listen to that tune because it sounds great, to enjoy it as it is and follow your gut reaction. Making and enjoying art is the same for me. Whilst I am now a graduate of the Royal College of Art’s Painting programme, I am grateful not to have been formally art educated until recently. This has enabled my art to be more driven by intuition. Sensing what colours, textures and compositions work together, for example, (the process) has sometimes been trial-and-error, but has developed a robust sense of trust I now have in my artistic vision and how I execute the plans I have. Starting out writing, then painting, expanding into sculpture, moving into sculptural paintings, before wandering down the rabbit-hole of sound performance, design and textile and now contemplating film and scriptwriting, my creative practice has expanded in an organic way, that I sometimes don’t even understand, but find super exciting, propelled by instinct.
Suleyman Wellings-Longmore, Saatchi Gallery, 18th September 2024. Image credit: London Art Collective.
‘Behind Enemy Lines’ by Suleyman Wellings-Longmore was presented as a part of the exhibition ‘From The One To The Many’, Saatchi Gallery, London, September 2024.
86. XUANJUN KE: A SPACE BETWEEN SENSE AND NONSENSE.
‘…to create nonsense in the face of an absurd world allows me to be.’
X.K.
Xuanjun Ke
The water-colour world of Xuanjun Ke feels both familiar and obscure, like the states between consciousness and a place between childhood and beyond. A certain nostalgia for a time passed and a time still to arrive. The artist in emergence - discovering a world of their own - immersive - fragmented. As draw lines as threads connecting pages within a sketchbook or the rigging of a theater... A treasury mood in lucidity and calm, awaiting their next act.
Your drawings seem to communicate emotion with urgency. What do you feel when you create, and why do you choose to draw to express yourself?
I mostly work first from sketches. When I transfer them to a bigger surface I try and keep the energy… the rawest form of the idea.
I like working with ink, watercolour and acrylic because they’re quick to dry and produce unexpected results, as well as their ability to be layered and create depth.
I loved to see your mural works, the shared sense of working as a collective feels very important to you, please can you contemplate this within your practice as a whole?
The involvement of a sense of community in my works are very much a reflection of my life. I treasure my collaborators and fellow artists and want to involve them in my work, whether that’s recording bits of conversations we had or have their accidental and/or planned creative inputs in my works. The artwork then carries meaning for me and is of personal importance. When the audience view my work, they can have their own interpretations. I usually disassociate myself from putting meanings onto my work.
Xuanjun Ke
Sustaining elements of childhood feels very pronounced in alot of work I am seeing at the moment, do you feel this about your own practice and if so why do you feel this is the case?
There are a lot of artists that I was exposed to in childhood who inspired me, sometimes whether I’m conscious of it or not. I was heavily influenced by artists like Tove Jansson, Jimmy Liao (Taiwanese children’s book author & illustrator), Polish animations of classical music (Studio Filmów Animowanych, Poznań), the animated children’s series “The Little Mole” (Czech Cartoon, 1957-2002) and other Eastern European Cartoons from Soviet times that came into China around the time I was a child, my parents also took me to lots of ballet theatre productions as a child, possibly adding the influences of theatrical and dramatic flares to my works. The media I was consuming all have a strong characteristic of storytelling, traditional media and beautiful illustrations that inspired me to recreate my own experiences in life through the media of storytelling and illustrated adventures. I’m also very drawn to nostalgic times and old things, they have a beauty that the modern world is not actively reproducing, such as music from the 1920s-90s jazz, blues, rock n roll, metal, 80s electronic synth, etc, paintings, traditional mediums, physical installations and works of Dada and the surrealists. I prioritize physical making methods and connections, they are what grounds me in reality, the things we can touch and feel give a more visceral and holistic experience to my daily life. The childhood element you described probably stems from a longing for nostalgic things and the hope to create new memories that are impressionable, fresh and unique.
I recognised the sense of your work being like fragments that feel connected somehow to a larger source, an ongoing story, your drawings seen out of context feel as fallen pages from a single series of illustrations, a single narrative, do you feel this and if so what do you feel the story as a whole is telling you?
My creative process stems from my sketches/sketchbooks, which come from my daily experiences and trains of thoughts, they [the sketches] present themselves in the way that thoughts do, jumbled and fragmented, as memories do when we try and recall them, the fragmented pieces of smell, touch, vision, people, sound, taste and conversations string themselves loosely in our minds to form a picture that we define as memories. They are a defined form yet can take any shape you like, mixed with imagination and environmental influences to become something. The story as a whole are just my reflections upon my own experiences, my personal truths.
When you mix media in your work, like a collage of intangible elements, a fascinating exchange takes place, an atmosphere. Can you express what you feel within that created space?
I feel I can just be, without having to be someone, be something or have the potential to create meanings, collage creates a space for me to feel adrift in the chaos… when I am in the chaotic world where most things don’t necessarily make sense, to create nonsense in the face of an absurd world allows me to be.
Xuanjun Ke, ‘Sketch No.1’, 24hr Artist Residency with Arcade Campfa at Spit & Sawdust Skatepark, Cardiff. Charcoal on newsprint paper, Sep. 2023, 42 × 59.4 cm.
A series of works by Xuanjun Ke were presented as a part of the exhibition ‘From The One To The Many’, Saatchi Gallery, London, September 2024.
85. VILHELM HAMMERSØI: A SPACE BETWEEN ABSENCE AND PRESENCE.
FREIZE MASTERS 2024
Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior in London, Brunswick Square, 1912, Oil on canvas, 53 x 76 cm / 20 7/8 x 29 7/8 in.
‘I have always thought there was such beauty about a room even though there weren’t any people in it, perhaps precisely when there weren’t any.’
V.H.
84: OSCAR MURILLO: A SPACE BETWEEN COLLAPSE AND SPIRIT.
Oscar Murillo: A balancing act between collapse and spirit. David Zwirner - LONDON.
Oscar Murillo, manifestation, (detail) 2023-2024. Oil, oil stick, spray paint, dirt and graphite on canvas. 260 x 280 cm.
To bodily scrawl as if in a state of emergency - to repeat again and again - to layer until a surface of scraped screams fill the continuum as whole - to void a space to riot - en-packeted to silence burns to a cacophony of such zigzagged momentum - to form a cage of allowance versus release.
With controlled speed as to abandon the waxed reverb of declaration - to repeat in obsessive searching - a state of bleeding of the scarred fields of despair.
To render remembrance of what it held within as to condense from a bruising to bursting - of the chaos over the calm, of the repeated over resilience - in the throwing, throbbing of the raw - held up in the tradition of its own revolt.
Oscar Murillo, Telegram, 2013-2014. Oil stick, ballpoint pen, fountain pen, felt tip pen, highlighter pen, permanent marker, paint, crayon, staples, natural pigments, debris and other mixed media on canvas. 34 x 47.5cm.
Morillo rings loud his porous declarations - his flamed manifestos of now or never - a mapped - human alarm call with every fierce rendered arrow - and then to return, with tender whispers that love is life.
Oscar Murillo, manifestation, 2023-2024. Oil, oil stick, spray paint, dirt and graphite on canvas. 260 x 280 cm. Image courtesy of David Zwirner.
Oscar Murillo: A balancing act between collapse and spirit. David Zwirner - London. Until November 16, 2024.
Thank you Sara Chan and Niamh Brogan.
83. SHEELA GOWDA: A SPACE BETWEEN PASSIVITY AND HURTING.
The Imaginary Institution of India, barbican.
'A very insidious sort of violence...the needles hang at the end almost passively but they have the potential for hurting.’
S.G.
Sheela Gowda, Untitled, 1997/2007. Thread, pigment, needles. Edition 1/3. Private Collection.
A scrawled looping of ropes - back and forth as a winding - circling of growing commitment - to fray and unravel - as the story of a life - and the many lives of a self lived - loosened and freed - and yet to return as a collective reminder - a shadow twin - to double in concentration.
Sheela Gowda, Untitled, 1997/2007. Thread, pigment, needles. Edition 1/3. Private Collection.
The Imaginary Institution of India, Art 1975-1998. Barbican - Until 5 January 2025.
Thank you Georgia Holmes.
82. LE TRANG - A SPACE BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT.
Le Trang, Self-Portrait, 2024, 42 x 48cm. Oil on Canvas, Private Collection.
A space between mother and self, between mauve and lilac and the life-giving greens of an imagined garden, forever in bloom - a place to return to even when far from home.
The focus of a subtle synthetism is vividly rich, with a knowing gaze set on the grandeur of the palatial and the luster of perception.
The first image I saw of your work was a double portrait in mauve - a photograph of you seated next to a painted depiction - there are certain shades of purple that return throughout your works - please can you contemplate your use of purple and why it is an important choice for you?
I was born and raised in Huế, the ancient capital of Vietnam. The color purple and the traditional áo dài in purple are symbols of my hometown.
To me, it represents the strength hidden behind gentleness—the qualities of a woman in the role of a mother. I emphasize the profound meaning of motherhood, the delicate balance between nurturing, caring for children, and a mother’s sense of self-worth. As a mother of three, I understand the pressures women face, having to maintain an image of grace while fulfilling their maternal duties.
When I saw the paintings in the real, my mind wandered to thoughts of the double portrait, and the idea of reimagining a self, what have you learned about yourself and what are the messages that you want to communicate through the creation of these works?
Similar to the meaning behind The Garden of Love (2024), this twin portrait explores and portrays the significance of combining the role of parenting with the elegance that comes from self-care and cultivating one's inner self.
I encourage young women to seek and accomplish their ambitions. Whatever their starting point, degree of education, or age, they should be confident in following their passions, despite the hurdles and problems that may come. The young woman in the artwork, immersed in her thoughts and desires, represents the fortitude to pursue her dreams and listen to her deep inner voice. All of the works in my MOTHERHOOD collection depict women who embody the delicate, distinctly Eastern, and deeply Vietnamese spirit.
There is a distinct sense of style connected to the 'Synthetism' movement within certain pieces, is there a connection to this movement within your practice and if so how do you see your work sitting within the landscape of painting?
Yes, my works indeed bear traces of the Synthetism movement. I am influenced by 19th-century French artists, particularly those of this movement, such as Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard. I find the Synthetism style, with its simplified forms, bold colors, and symbolic representation, to be a remarkable way to convey deeper emotional and spiritual messages.
When portraying Vietnamese women figures, I blend this technique, by integrating Synthetism into my work, I aim to revive and reinterpret its spirit, creating a bridge between the past and the present.
Through this approach, I hope to imbue my paintings with a sense of harmony and emotional resonance, whether in serene landscapes or the elegant figures of women. This is how I honor the Synthetism tradition while also contributing my own voice to contemporary artistic dialogue.
I found your choice of frames to be intriguing, works made in modern times, framed to emulate another era, please can you contemplate your feelings towards the presentation of your practice?
A frame is not merely a decorative element; it is a symbol of the artist’s respect—both for the work itself and for those who engage with it. This respect extends to the space in which the artwork is displayed.
I am inspired by the exhibition standards of renowned museums worldwide, where frames are chosen to complement the artwork, elevating its story and presence. By framing my contemporary works in a style that echoes a bygone era, I aim to create a bridge between the past and the present.
This approach invites the viewer to engage with the work on multiple levels, harmonizing historical elements with the vivid immediacy of today’s visual experience.
At its core, the way I choose to frame my work reflects my deep commitment to presenting art in a manner that is both respectful, crafting an experience that captivates the eye while also stirring the emotions of those who behold it.
The portrait of the subject with a paintbrush in hand engaging with a surface that is out of viewers' sight fascinates me - please can you expand upon this work?
For me, the moment of painting holds a profound significance. It is a time when I completely retreat into my inner world, allowing myself to live authentically and true to my essence. That moment truly reflects my personal journey, both as an artist and a mother. Painting is the time where I can be entirely myself, diving deep into my soul, where I feel free to express my emotions and thoughts. In this self-portrait, I depict myself painting a weaver bird's nest—a symbol of 'home'—not only for birds but also for us, humans. Home is a place we all cherish. It’s where comfort, love, and belonging thrive.
This portrait, to me, is more than an image of an artist at work. It represents my thoughts and dedication to my family. It reflects the balance between my roles as an artist and a mother, creating a sense of home and comfort, not just in the painting but also in real life.
Through this painting, which reflects inner strength and the deep connection between family and art, I aim to affirm the power of feminism and the tremendous resilience of mothers. Mothers possess an infinite capacity to create, nurture, and inspire—not only within their families but also in their artistic creations. Creativity is not merely about producing works; it is the crystallization of love, devotion, and the delicate balance that the artist brings to life in their work.
A series of works by Le Trang were presented as a part of the exhibition ‘From The One To The Many’, Saatchi Gallery, London, September 2024.
81. MICHAEL CRAIG-MARTIN: A SPACE BETWEEN WITHIN AND WITHOUT.
Michael Craig-Martin, Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Michael Craig-Martin, Untitled (Black), 1989, Venitian Blinds.
A shadow square hovers -
beneath four pails - each holding a fullness still - as ropes taught - dart up to suspend a stage in silence.
As an abandoned accordion paused - its concertina left open - a box that never closes.
Graphed papers tessellate until a line is met - a frame of white - a boundary fort.
A tilted shelf - where 15 glass bottles lean - their multiple water lines form a single horizon -
An imagined ringing range of notes - to tap such bottles all in a row - as a xylophone made from what was there - what was saved.
As like Alice, beneath a glass table - looking up into the half-full. A shadow self - a cast illusion of a half-empty.
Untitled black, white and red blinds are pulled to close - but a window between is permanently open -
- As to view from within and not from without.
Michael Craig-Martin, Untitled (White), 1989, Venitian Blinds.
Michael Craig-Martin, Royal Academy of Arts, London. Until 10 December 2024.
Thank you Elena Davidson.
80. CY TWOMBLY - A SPACE BETWEEN THE FLEETING AND THE PERMANENT.
Cy Twombly - Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio - ROME.
Cy Twombly - Bed, New York 1951. © Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio. As seen in M-A (A SPACE BEWTEEN) issue 3, still life image by Harry Nathan.
The impulsive frames of intensity - protected from the fear of forgetting. To resurrect these fleeting memories of atmospheres past - to return in a heartbeat.
The romantic pull to document the momentary seems essential to Cy Twombly, in all media - the artist's expression in response to what feels like a personal search - a meditation. His photographs propose and possess privacy, to realise a truth exposed in plain sight and yet like a phantom these documents feel other-worldly. Media meld to form a painted poem tangibly tender and suspended - a mirrored impression recognised over stark realities - to watch the dappled time hover like fireflies to dissipate through blind windows.
A ready-made medium of the polaroid fascinates, how the immediacy of processing is readily available, originally created for industries that needed an immediate response, speed compromised over quality, and yet the eyes of the Artist appreciate the granular, tertiary tone of its palette, its ephemeral nature and its ability to somehow blur a reality with the ambiguous.
The object of an image that drops from its camera, which physically is divided by the hands and quietly, magically appears from a charcoal beginning, a blueish illusion ghostly silhouetted - haunting the mechanical before revealing its soul as if organic and yet physically synthetic. A poetry observed, even leaked as if a secret.
The distant relation to the pinhole camera, ceremonially presented with a magician's flourish, the polaroid loses none of its appeal in the excited fingers of a Black Mountain College alumni in Cy, whose images feel like the impulsive blushes of tender gazes later found between the pages of seismic novels.
Where the scent of the gloaming is inhaled as the melody of the night ebbs the landscape. As the impressionists astonished at the passing of light after the rain or how a breeze disrupts the haze of palpable heat, so too does Twombly reflect the wonder of time. Images taken as if for his eyes only, show the invisible nature of daily rituals and seasonal shifts, repeated so many times that they become more instinctive than inquiring, remind that the beauty of the present can be profound and often hold a permanence of melancholy which contradicts the ephemeral nature of fragile polaroid prints.
The rucked-up sheets of an empty bed, still warm from a dream - are grazed by the morning, a light that glows over surfaces as canyons and rests in momentary languid pools and enveloping shadow.
Eyes rest on forms as atmospheres - as sculptures of silence - as if for the first time - watched from the floor, where an impression of fruit, plate, and table become one, where pea pods become landscapes and a misty valley - a bruise on the page.
The blur of turning to hear a broken conversation or to see a room while dancing - A consciousness distracted by the sound of rain, a piano in another room, or a glimmering of light on a marble floor - where have I been?
—
Very special thanks to Nicola Del Roscio and Eleonora Di Erasmo - Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio.
A series of images by Cy Twombly are published within issue 3 of M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN, currently still available here along with 16 international stockists.
The M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) contemplation and interview series will return in Autumn 2024. Thank you for reading.
79. NAN GOLDIN: A SPACE BETWEEN LOSS AND GROWTH.
Fragile Beauty, The Victoria and Albert Museum - LONDON.
Nan Goldin, Thanksgiving, 1973-1999. Cibachrome prints.
As flats of skin - scaled iridescent and gliding - as to unfurl from glistening - to slip simultaneously, as a seeded dandelion swathes a breeze, as a plume ushers a snuff of candled chorus - as to watch such bleeding impressions permeate to gold - as Caravaggio's Samson - shorn and sinking and Ophelia drowns in euphoric blisses.
Nan Goldin, Thanksgiving, 1973-1999. Cibachrome prints.
As to confess into a slipstream of admittance - a foaming - to flow as a torrent - and smash into open eyes as to be drunk at the wheel - embedded to crash - losing concentration - lucidity won.
Nan Goldin, Thanksgiving, 1973-1999. Cibachrome prints.
And with such tenderness - as drifting feathering of beats - passing by with a violence of continuing - of perpetual rhythms of an ongoing.
Nan Goldin, Thanksgiving, 1973-1999. Cibachrome prints.
To be halted - to be held up - to be dropped - to slump into sleep - to be bathed in a gloaming of evenings and the breaks between too late and too early - honeyed in remembrance and yet a space excavated to be flooded with the loneliness of sobriety as nature returns - cruel and spare - as dawn breaks this nectar - to remain there - to return there - a space within myself - alone again - and yet how do I leave? When such colours - beguile me - define me - and blur a line between loss and growth - between living and surviving, when to remove - risks remittance from this addiction to seeing with bruised eyes.
Nan Goldin, Thanksgiving, 1973-1999. Cibachrome prints.
Fragile Beauty - Victoria and Albert Museum - until 5 January 2025.
With thanks: Daisy Howarth at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
78. ALFRED CHENG: A SPACE BETWEEN EMERGENCE AND SUBMERGENCE.
‘As I meticulously intertwine the threads, I am reminded of the interconnectedness of our world, where every strand of threads has a role to play in the larger picture.’ A.C.
Alfred Cheng, Species (2023), Thread and acrylic on canvas, 80 x 120 cm, image courtesy of the artist.
Your work is fascinating - the way you create a sense of emergence… was there a breakthrough moment in developing this medium?
During the past few years… I have discovered the captivating power of threads as a medium of expression. I pay homage to the legacy of craftsmanship and the unique cultural heritage embedded within Asia’s textile traditions. I strive to reinterpret and breathe new life into traditional practices…
I believe that only through the interconnectedness of each other… In my eyes, there are no boundaries and nothing is absolute. It is this vision that allows me to explore the endless possibilities of interconnectedness and unleashing a thread's expressive ability…
When I saw your work for the first time - I immediately thought of Georges Seurat and his drawings - made on thick, granular paper - where an image is implied and not fully defined - an impression - an essence... when you work, do you enter a specific feeling and space within yourself?
The process of working with threads is a meditative and transformative experience. As an artist with deep roots in Asian heritage, I draw inspiration from the vibrant textiles, embroidery, and weaving techniques that have been integral to the region's cultural identity for centuries, mainly within Hong Kong and China.
As I meticulously intertwine the threads, I am reminded of the interconnectedness of our world, where every strand of threads has a role to play in the larger picture. This interplay of threads reflects the complex and interconnected nature of Asian culture, where diverse traditions, beliefs, and values coexist harmoniously.
A thread can play a crucial meaning by representing the concept of familial bonds and intergenerational connections. Family ties hold significant importance in many Asian societies, where the harmony and well-being of the family unit are highly valued.
These traditions, which have been passed down through generations, serve as a unifying force that connects individuals to their heritage and roots. They provide a sense of identity and belonging, fostering a shared understanding and appreciation for the cultural tapestry of the Asian community.
Alfred Cheng, Amondawa, 2024, Thread, acrylic and nails on canvas, 120 x 120 cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
There is a fascinating tension within the works you make - a thread - taught - held between nails - like an instrument and also like a three-dimensional etching - please can you contemplate on the nature of making the works and what you have learned so far in this body of work as a whole?
My art aims to encourage cross-cultural exchange and serves as a bridge between the past and the present, allowing viewers to experience the unique beauty and cultural significance of Asia's textile culture. By combining the traditional medium and the innovative technology, this juxtaposition of old and new creates a dialogue between tradition and innovation, inviting viewers to question preconceived notions and discover new dimensions of Asian textile heritage.
I hope that my artworks will deepen people's understanding and appreciation of Asia's textile heritage by preserving traditional mediums, infusing new artistic vision, fostering cultural exchange, evoking emotional connections, and inspiring creativity. Through these avenues, I aspire to create a lasting impact that leads to greater recognition, respect, and celebration of Asia's rich and diverse textile traditions.
There appear to be specific themes that you return to - I found the depictions of hair and the crowds to be really interesting... please can you speak of this series and what these images signify to you?
Crowds have a unique energy and complexity that fascinates me as an artist. Crowds also serve as a microcosm of society, showcasing the diverse range of individuals and their interactions. Within a crowd, you can find people from different backgrounds, cultures, and walks of life. This diversity presents an opportunity to explore the intricacies of human relationships, societal structures, and the interplay between individuals.
Individual identities can merge and become subsumed within the collective. This anonymity allows viewers to project their own experiences, emotions, and interpretations onto the crowd, fostering a sense of connection and relatability.
Alfred Cheng, Choir (2024), Thread and nails on canvas, 120 x 120 cm. Image courtesy of artist.
Special Thanks to Carlo Volpi.
77. YAYOI KUSAMA: A SPACE BETWEEN AURA AND LIVING.
Pumpkin, 2024 - Kensington Gardens - LONDON.
Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin, 2024. Painted bronze, 6 metres tall and 5.5 metres in diameter. Courtesy Ota Fina Art, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner.
‘I adore pumpkins…
As my spiritual home since childhood, and with their infinite spirituality…
…pumpkins bring about poetic peace in my mind. Pumpkins talk to me.
Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins.
Giving off an aura of my sacred metal state, they embody a base for the joy of living, a living shared by all of humankind on the earth.
‘It is for the pumpkins that I keep on going.’
Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin, 2024. Painted bronze, 6 metres tall and 5.5 metres in diameter. Courtesy Ota Fina Art, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner.
Until 3 November 2024. Kesnington Gardens, London. The Serpentine.
76. SHANTI BELL: A SPACE BETWEEN NARRATIVE AND NAVIGATE.
The Room that Shared, MAMA - LONDON.
Shanti Bell, photograph: André Jacques, image courtesy of the artist, 2024.
‘Space for me goes hand in hand with sensation and feeling. Finding spaces that make you feel safe, loved, heard, held, and alive - can be hard to pinpoint and are often fleeting moments.’ S.B.
Please introduce your exhibition 'The Room that Shared’.
The Room that Shared is a project I have thought about for a long time. How can the laughter between two sisters or the bickering between mother and son be translated into sculpture and form? By interviewing many different people, it became about navigating these different narratives which shared many overlaps and differences, and creating pieces that reflected how nuanced and complicated family is. Human interaction was a constant thread within this project - this work was about people so it had to be for people. The sculptures were family and when you engaged with them they became home and in turn communicated different stories of family relationships through the sensations and materials used.
Asking people to remove their shoes when entering the gallery space and offering pieces that could be touched, laid on, and interacted with was also about challenging the normal structure of gallery spaces. Boundaries could be crossed, connections could be made and natural human overlaps happened.
Shanti Bell, photograph: André Jacques, image courtesy of the artist, 2024.
The way you play with space is fascinating - in an architectural space but also in a very physical - bodily way - and I see that this instinct continues with your new work - please can you expand on how and why you engage with space and the way you explore volume...
Space for me goes hand in hand with sensation and feeling. Finding spaces that make you feel safe, loved, heard, held, and alive - can be hard to pinpoint and are often fleeting moments. Within this project, I was bringing forth sculptures that offered sensations, compelled engagement, and were activated by the body. The element of unknown was how different people would then choose to engage with the pieces. The negative space that exists around us and what it can communicate when we engage with other people is very reflective of how we view ourselves and our relationships. I almost feel compelled to explore this intangible space that surrounds us every day.
When I first visited the gallery I knew instantly that this project was to be site-specific and engage with the natural architecture of the gallery. I wanted to challenge what the gallery experience could be and so the pieces need to feel at one with the space by creating spaces that the body would have to navigate and that would alter someone’s personal space. Volume and scale are both things I will continually engage with within my practice. I see my sculptures and forms only getting bigger exploring how they can challenge spaces that already exist and offer new spaces within.
Shanti Bell, photograph: André Jacques, image courtesy of the artist, 2024.
Blue feels important to you, a feeling of a fallen sky which envelopes, splashing and lucid - can you expand upon your returning use of blue...
Without realising I think I am instinctively drawn to blue, it wasn’t until The Missing Thread project that a friend commented that it’s my signature colour. There’s an infinity I find in the colour blue representing both the sea and sky. These two forms of nature I reach for when I am searching for ways to ground and re-connect and so in some ways placing distinct shades of blue within my creative palette offers a moment for connection. In many ways, we can often miss what is important to us but subconsciously it will find its way into our spaces offering comfort and familiarity - the reoccurrence of blue in many ways I think provides that for me.
There is a sensitive approach to remaining authentic I aim to maintain when creating a project. The blue foam that is featured in The Room that Shared is that material in its pure form. That specific shade of blue, the creases it holds, and the memory it retains are all part of its narrative and it was important to honour that. We hope that people will take us how we are in the form, colour, shape we come in and that has been my approach to working with these materials. The inclusion of foam was instinctual and yet the shade of blue that it provides was a welcomed familiar presence.
Shanti Bell, installation for ‘The Missing Thread’, Somerset House, 2024. Photograph Reinis Lismanis, Image courtesy Shanti Bell.
I feel listening is very key to your practice, you listen to materials - within their surfaces and their sounds, to the souls of people, to space itself... do you see your practice as a form of meditation and if so what have your learnt from processing your instincts in this way?
The varying degrees that the space family occupies is a turbulent, ever-shifting, complicated and deeply fulfilling one. In many ways, I use my practice as a medium to comprehend and make sense of the complexities family can come in. It is healing to confront things internally and I find comfort in exploring this through creative means. I am always continuing to learn that I am a work in progress as I constantly shift and change - reacting and discovering the world. It is the combination of understanding to trust myself and give myself grace for not having all the answers.
The ears hold so much power as sound adds much context to the world around us. Listening to my surroundings, to the community that is around me, and the spaces I occupy and interact with, I find to be an integral tool to how I not only navigate my creative practice but life. Pausing to listen to offers moments of contemplation, moments to be taught and a space to simply be an open receiver.
Shanti Bell, photograph: André Jacques, image courtesy of the artist, 2024.
Freedom plays an important role within your practice, can you expand upon how you have explored this within your work?
Being present to the fact that I am free and alive is something I show gratitude for as much as I can. There is always a thread of freedom in every project I explore - the freedom to creatively express is rare and I am grateful for it. What I hope The Room that Shared offers is a space for others to feel free and be free within. Freedom to touch and sit and interact with the different sculptures, freedom to not have to be cautious when navigating the gallery - we are all at home here. Someone at the exhibition described the space as “If rest were a playground, this would be it.” Moments to play, be curious, be childlike, be expressive, explore and simply be, aren’t always a given and so offering a space in which you could feel comfortable to be free and to do this was crucial.
How I often work is in an instinctive nature with a strong sense of play - I look at ways I can push boundaries of materials, spaces and challenge myself as an artist. With no agenda other than to create works that are reflective of the concept and authentic in their voice allows a freedom of thought, a free way to make and construct, and a sense of freedom to be an artist in the form I feel that occupies.
Shanti Bell, photograph: André Jacques, image courtesy of the artist, 2024.
Shanti Bell, photograph: André Jacques, image courtesy of the artist, 2024.
Creative Director & Maker: Shanti Bell
Curation: MAMA
Photographer: André Jacques
Movement Director: Ayanna Birch
Gallery Installation Photographer: Dami Vaughan