Weekly News: Art work created from weekly news items from the media or news items that we make through protest.

Week 1

One week into 2016 and Britain is busy at making war: dropping bombs in Syria and Iraq, deploying troops in Libya and fighting in Afghanistan.

Words where there can be none.

Thinking about this painting about war in the Middle East made me recall Adorno’s statement about the end of art after World War II, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” Whilst I understand how difficult it is to make art, to create and even to live in a world that is so cruel, I also believe it is a necessity.  I am aware that I am contradicting myself and that the reification of the artist and art objects makes this an even more complex and difficult choice.  Perhaps one should attempt to speak and create more plainly, as an ‘ordinary’ person rather than and ‘artist’ who might be perceived to have abnormally great stature. I certainly think that we need to talk and that communication and creativity are what make us more human or humane; providing an impulse against the forces of death and destruction.

With this work, I have purposively looked at buildings and bombs, rather than people, because I don’t feel that I have the right to gaze directly at the suffering of people upon whom war and the consequences of war have been inflicted. Is my sideways glance any better? I’m not sure. I am also purposively using a canvas, acknowledging the tools of an artist and consciously making the experience of observing war into an art object.  However, I am self-reflective and critical whilst doing this.  They are conscious processes made manifest.  The artifices of the media that made, captured and distributed the image, such as the gun sight, television and camera conventions are also intended to allow the realisation that we watch war through a lens and manipulate information and images to create our own realities. Our relationship to the ‘other’ are mediated through them.  The direct gaze however can be more searing and our control over the ‘other’ near absolute.

There are many unanswered questions for me about this kind of practice and protest, but it seems right to attempt it. Susan Sontag said that people don’t become inured to images of war but, “It is passivity that dulls feeling.” This is at least the beginning of a journey, as are all the best artistic endeavours.

 

Week 2

Does anyone really believe that doctors should work longer hours?

Look at the mistakks they make when they are tired.