FOR THE MULTI-DISCIPLINARY POST GRADUATE SYMPOSIUM HOSTED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND CREATIVE WRITING, LANCASTER UNIVERSITY 12TH JUNE 2010

FRACTURED IMAGES - BROKEN WORDS.

As a Conceptual Artist my work is eclectic both in method and materials – being led by what best conveys my artistic message.

I have been influenced by the Art Critic John Berger who, writing about the painter Francis Bacon, concluded that rather than only painting to shock, Bacon was foreseeing the “pitiless” world we live in today. This pitilessness sparing “neither the planet itself nor anyone living in it.”¹ Much of my art practice now explores the idea of us living in a “pitiless” world and addresses issues around what we are doing to both the planet and ourselves.

Berger goes onto define the present historical period as “a time of the wall”, noting that although the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 many have since been erected.(ibid) In conjunction to these he believes that walls of separation exist within us all.

Exploring walls in all their guises has become a pre-occupation within my work as is the use of Text.

Why Text?

Text has been used in many movements:- “Dada nonsense words, Surrealist painting poems, Constructivist typographies, Oriental Calligraphy, Post War Gestural painting and much more.”² It's noted that in his book “Writing on the Wall” (2003), Simon Morley traces the growing bond between word and image, explaining how artists have harnessed the resulting tension to form identities, challenge authority, and make sense of a world in constant change. (ibid) I feel I use text in my art for all the above reasons but also because I find it aesthetically pleasing.

From October 2007 until March 2008, I was Artist in Residence at Lancaster University Chaplaincy Centre. Within this Residency, I explored the notion of “Walls” and “Barriers” and used actual household bricks to symbolically dismantle these. I called the Residency Project the “Walls Art Project”. Working within a University it seemed appropriate to look at any walls/barriers to Education.

“BRICK BOOKS” ART INSTALLATION - INTERNATIONAL STUDY CENTRE

Students at the ISC are faced with a very real wall: one that stands between them and their mastery of the English language. Breaking through this wall will enable them to continue onto a Degree Course at Lancaster University.
Their tutor, Dr. Sue Parkin, asked if I could work with them within the Walls Art Project to address this.

Sue asked the students to find “positive” words in English. The group of fifty found 200 such words and each chose a favourite. They then painted a brick white and printed their chosen word onto one side of the brick. On the other side of the brick they wrote the same word in their own language. I took the students’ bricks and made them into the “Brick Books” which I felt was appropriate.

“CUPS”

The “Wall” in question within this work is Prison Walls. This installation is inspired by the Poets of Guantanamo who in the first year of their detention were not allowed writing materials. Undeterred, they composed poems on Styrofoam cups using pebbles. The poems were passed from cell to cell.

When the guards discovered what was going on, they smashed the cups and threw them away fearing it was a way of passing coded messages.

Fragments of these “cup poems” survived and are included in the anthology Poems from Guantanamo – The Detainees Speak., Mark Falcoff, (ed), published by University of Iowa Press. Iowa Press have granted me permission to use quotes from this book.

I have fragmented the poems by way of reflecting the original fragments of the “cup poems” which survived – hopefully a metaphor for the survival of hope for detainees past and present.

CHRISTINE DAWSON
ARTIST
JUNE 2010

¹John Berger, Prophet of a Pitiless World, The Guardian, May 29, 2004.

²Review by University of California Press on Simon Morley’s Book “Writing on the Wall”, (Dec. 2003)

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