PETER NEILSON Agitation in Swingtime AU S T R A L I A N GA L L E R I E S MELBOURNE
14 November - 6 December 2020
Major paintings in order of appearance From Being There, through Nowhere Known, to Elsewhere 2020 oil on linen 150 x 300 cm Suddenly, again 2014 oil on linen 150 x 300 cm Big avenging angels re-returning (real value re-established) 2012-13 oil on linen 150 x 300 cm The unfinished fact 2017-18 oil on linen 150 x 300 cm Agitation in swingtime 2020 oil on linen 150 x 300 cm The whistle blower 2017-18 oil on linen 150 x 300 cm The painted mirror (false as fair) 2015-19 oil on linen 150 x 300 cm
AU S T R A L I A N GA L L E R I E S MELBOURNE
Invites you to the opening
PETER NEILSON Agitation in Swingtime Saturday 14 November 2020 11am - 5pm 35 Derby Street Collingwood VIC 3066 Current until Sunday 6 December 2020 Open 7 days 10am to 6pm T 03 9417 4303 melbourne@australiangalleries.com.au australiangalleries.com.au
Front cover: From Being There, through Nowhere Known, to Elsewhere 2020 oil on linen 150 x 300 cm Photography: Viki Petherbridge
From Being There, through Nowhere Known, to Elsewhere 2020 oil on linen 150 x 300 cm
Prefaces (or Eulogies) Some thoughts about some of the works exhibited: about their content or their form. Or both: these days I’m finding it harder to tell the difference. I do this by joining the end of a queue trailing a tradition, ‘as old as the bible’, to write ‘prefaces’ (or ‘eulogies’) for works of art.
From Being There, through Nowhere Known, to Elsewhere
This work became, during the moments of its making, an image of the journey created by acting on hardly registering ‘frissons of ecstasy’ and ‘the fragile thought’: the only things an artist believes is real.
The unfinished fact 2017-18 oil on linen 150 x 300 cm
The unfinished fact 2017-18
Over the time of it’s making, ‘The unfinished fact’ became, for itself, a narrative on a particular, unfinished past injustice and an ongoing one, also particular and unfinished. The painting eventually came to a standstill around a central figure seeking ‘justice not yet attained.’
Agitation in swingtime 2020 oil on linen 150 x 300 cm
Agitation in swingtime 2020 The painting ‘Agitation in swingtime’ was used to create an amazing video by John Campbell and Ernie Althoff with photographic images by Viki Petherbridge. https://youtu.be/d6XHsg3F8Ls
The painted mirror (false as fair) 2015-19 oil on linen 150 x 300 cm
The painted mirror (false as fair) 2015-19
As my favourite Swiss/French chef said of the moment when to remove the steak from the flame, ‘en pointe’, not before, not after. However, my paintings these days, more often than not are struggling to arrive at ‘en pointe’. They are becoming uncertain, interrupted, discontinuous. What is being painted is the politics of the painting, that is, the history of the painting’s journey, where the painting has come from. The painting becomes a record of the remnants of what images survived the journey and the traces of the images that didn’t. As I have written elsewhere, the problems surrounding the use of charcoal, eraser and paper to draw the ‘en plein air’ landscape are not those to be solved when painting a large studio canvas mediating different ideas, marks and possibles of an image of competing temporalities, distances, perspectives. The large studio canvas is, for me, to acknowledge, through embedded unsureness, a solidarity with an uncertain, incomplete and weary world. I respect the unfinished ‘fact’ and negotiate an unfinished, abandoned ‘solution’. I want questions not answers.
Photomontages My photomontage form is a pretty blunt instrument: two images placed side-by-side left to their own devices to create links between each. I’ve made these things for decades; in fact the subject matter for one of my first photomontages in this simple form was, on the left, a photograph, of Rhodesian Prime Minister, Ian Douglas Smith from 1964 to 1979, surrounded by his military echelon, aiming an army pistol into a photograph on the right, of a ferocious, tree-bending cyclone aiming itself at the PM. As I said, blunt. These photomontages are some of my latest two-image arguments from the red and the blue corners, and looking out on this wounded, weary world, there’s more where these came from.
Now and then 2020 photomontage on board 10.5 x 8 cm
Murder most foul 2020 photomontage on board 43 x 10.5 cm
We are beyond. We are gone. 2019 photomontage 18 x 31.5 cm
The Scroll Paintings were made from felt solidarity with
as photo-journalist with Melbourne’s The Age newspaper:
the civil rights protest movement of Hong Kong in the
‘If anyone comes at you while you’re photographing, walk
northern summer of 2019. They were made as the events
away and go straight back to the office’.
unfolded and listened to on the radio, and watched on TV and social media.
Memory eternal! In solidarity with chroniclers, journalists and readers
With those feelings came a desire to allow Fine Art (an
The timing of the painting of Memory eternal! In solidarity
old but still useful definition of a particular section of the
with chroniclers, journalists, and readers 2019 became
practice of art) to link for a moment historically in common
weird. Six months after stopping work on this painting, the
cause with the popular and applied arts of record.
worldwide Covid-19 pandemic became the new normal. Weird because, made in 2019, it began with a general
The painting techniques used in these works became a
long-term interest in the role of art as propaganda, and
link to the pace of media arts, allowing the paintings‘
particularly around the Black Death in mid-Fourteenth
‘indifference to finish’ to imply the hour-by-changing-hour-
Century Florence and Siena, and at that time the
speed of the unfolding protests while making the paintings.
reintroduction of adherence to Church authority after that pandemic. The Black Death, the people were told, was ‘God’s
In solidarity with Hong Kong protesters was the
vengeance on his sinful creations’ who had ignored his law as
first of these four paintings.
told to them through the church. More authoritative images
The painting was added to and adjusted in relation to the
of an angry, gesticulating Christ became ‘necessary’.
unfolding story coming out daily, hourly, from Hong Kong.
Also, the painting recalls a more modern episode of national
For example, the depiction of the sprayed blue dye was
and nationalist vengeances based on perceived unforgivable
added to the work in real time while it was being introduced
insults.
as a weapon in the conflict. The use of the indelible dye enabled the State to identify and arrest protesters hours and
Finally, it is an appreciation from a dedicated slow reader, of
days later far from the scenes of protest.
his library and the long-form explanation of Je-Ne-Se-Quoi, who, at one time in his arrogant youth, imagined Je-Ne-Se-
In solidarity with photojournalists
Quoi could not possibly exist, only to discover from slow
Photojournalism can be dangerous work, even, it seems,
reading, that at one time in history, it did not exist.
just by working outside an Australian courthouse, as my son observed during his schooldays work-experience job
In solidarity against facial recogniton technology. . . and tear gas 2019 oil on linen 55.5 x 286.5 cm
Memory eternal! In solidarity with chroniclers, journalists and readers 2019 oil on linen 54.5 x 284.5 cm
In solidarity with Hong Kong protesters 2019 oil on linen 54.5 x 284.5 cm
In solidarity with photojournalists 2019 oil on linen 57 x 286.5 cm
Aritst hero: Picasso 2018 charcoal and chalk on paper 37 x 26.5 cm
Artst hero: Frida 2018 charcoal and chalk on paper 38 x 19 cm
My young comrade from the south 2013 oil on linen mounted on board 48.5 x 19.5 cm
Older, wiser, less famous c. 2010 oil on board 10 x 14.5 cm
We are here 2014 oil on board 12.5 x 20 cm
My future coming back to get me 2013 oil on linen mounted board 41 x 65 cm
The inquiry: making it all just go away 2008-09 oil on linen 60 x 81 cm
Elsewhere To posit, for example, the relationship between the conceptual and colour in art, as though it were no more than a relation between elements of equal stature and with similar determinations may be to misunderstand the very difficulty that the demands of philosophy have in relation to artworks. This is especially the case when the philosophical demand is identified with the expectation that an understanding, philosophy’s understanding of the work of art, is both necessary and possible. There would be a demand for a form of knowledge that completed (. . . philosophy would be present as the work of ‘understanding’). Art would have been completed in the process. However, what endures as a challenge to this position is not the identification of the work of art with the domain of an infinite number of interpretations . . . If there is a challenge, then it comes from elsewhere. It would be located in the ineliminable capacity of art to refuse the demands of philosophy (albeit, a certain conception of the philosophical) and in refusing them to construct a founding irreducibility between the demands of thought and the work of art . . . and one that left open the possibility of forms of relationality that were not structured by the incorporation and then the subsequent overcoming of art’s particularity in the name of the philosophical.
From Art’s Philosophical Work by Andrew Benjamin 2015
‘Reality is the motif, and the poet must not adapt his experience to that of the philosopher.’
Wallace Stevens, 20th century American poet
Working on my large paintings in my studio, ‘alone’, I am an “artist” and I am a “public.” I paint. I assess. I wait, for a “frisson of ecstasy “ (Aragon), which creates some new (intuitive?) idea, something that I have never thought. I paint it on the canvas. I assess again, and wait again, for another “event” (Lazzarato). When I “sense” it, I act on that possible “percept” (Bergson) and position it on the canvas. I wait again for another “interval between received and performed movements.” (Bergson); and so it goes . . . As I work, my painting comes to me as something wholly new; that is, the painting becomes something I was not expecting; something that literally has made a life of its own and, once made has no other purpose than to be in the world as “a work” and “the work” of art. (After reading Adorno’s essay Vers une musique informelle this statement, as Adorno himself would say, must be modified. He writes, ‘Whatever manifests itself as immediate, ultimate, as the fundamental given, will turn out, according to the insights of dialectical logic, to be already mediated or postulated.’ However, Adorno continues, ‘Of undoubted significance . . . is Hegel’s insight that although all immediacy is mediated and dependent on its opposite, the concept of an unmediated thing – that is, something which has become or has been set free – is not wholly engulfed by mediation.’)
I am the angel of reality seen for a moment standing in the door
Wallace Stevens from Angel Surrounded by Paysans (1949)
I am, as is my art, a multiplicity of engagements with the world and viewpoints related to the different modes of reality with which I engage the world, from my particular, individual life, here and now.
For example, just this past year I have been, simultan eously, a “short term contract labourer”, an “artist,” an “entrepreneur”, a “researcher,” a “designer;” also, a “protester of government policies,” a “reader of books.” I am a “volunteer carer of small children.” I am a “partner.” I have also “retired.” Retired that is, from a working life-time of ‘day work’ during which I was variously engaged as, a “full time employee,” a “contracted self-employed sub-contractor,” a ”non-contracted (precarious) self-employed sub-contractor,” an “entrepreneurial” employer of labour for particular jobs and, in between stop-start work, “unemployed,” with little or no ability to claim unemployment benefits. So, with my many economic, social and aesthetic positions I truly, “contain multitudes.” I am an “artist.’ I am “a public.” I am an “etc.” I paint it all.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
From “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman,19th century American poet
To explain, a little more, the terms used by Aragon, Lazzarato and Bergson that I use to describe the process of making ideas concrete, that is, making my large paintings from “new/intuitive” thoughts where “poetry stretches beyond its limits” and in doing so, make new forms, new contents, new subjectivities: The “frisson.”
From Paris Peasant, Louis Aragon in 1924 wrote:
‘As far as I know, the geography of pleasure has never been taught, although proficiency in this subject would constitute an effective weapon against life’s tediums. No one has assumed the responsibility of assigning its limits to the frisson, of drawing the boundaries of the caress, of charting the territory of ecstasy.’
From Elizabeth Lenk’s essay Sense and Sensibility, 2015:
‘It is in the frisson, shudder, or shiver where Aragon seeks to uncover an objective process: the concretization of ideas. Denuded of its logical function, thought comes up against its limit, in sensual perception. At the moment of the frisson, intelligence is forced into retirement. The senses think. From now on, the content of thinking is to be measured solely by effect.’ So, the “frisson’ is the sensing of unthinking thought.
The “event.”
From Experimental Politics by Maurizio Lazzararto, 2017:
‘The “event” is a bifurcation, a disengagement from the law, norms, and existing values. The event is what crops up from history and sinks back into history without being history itself. … What is called “history” here can be understood as the product of the multiplicity of discursive [say what we tell you to say] and nondiscursive [do what we direct you to do] devices of subjectification and subjugation imposed [on citizens], both openly and covertly.’ In relation to my painting process, the “event” is the escape, the “ecstasy of the new idea” that, when acted on, changes the course of the “history” and the “politics” of the painting. The “percept” and the “intervals between received and performed movements”: From Videophilosophy by Maurizio Lazzarato 2019 First, from the introductory essay by Jay Hetrick:
The “percept”: ‘affects that express to us, multitudes of intensities and rhythms. The “intervals between received and performed movement” are ontologically prior to all signification and representation. … This asignifying, molecular level should be understood as being inhabited by prediscursive rhythms, intensities, colours, and sounds that shape the very conditions of image, word, and therefore subjectivity itself.’ And from Lazzararto: ‘The human body is distinguished from other bodies [other animals] only by the more complex and elaborate form through which it actually responds to a received action. The brain, as part of the body, functions only as an interface, but as an interface through which the interval between received and performed movement is maximized. Human actions immediately follow from a received action but have the possibility of being based on a selection (receptivity) of the latter, and, developing a delayed reaction (spontaneity of new actions) on the basis of this delay.’
So, “the interval between received and performed movements,” allows for “spontaneity of new actions.” On the “politics” that occurs on the canvas in the making of my large paintings: There is a politics of the work in as much as the “contrivings,” “intriguings” and “maneuverings” created out of the acts that occur inside the “interval between received and performed movements” by “the artist,“ are then challenged by “the public,” that is, by my “the public.” I paint. I assess. I retain images, I modify images, I paint over images. But . . . To quote Felix Guattari:
‘The transformation of the work does not belong to the artist; she is carried along by its movement. There is not an operator and a material object of the operation, but a collective assemblage that carries along the artist, individuality, and her public, and all the institutions that surround her, critics, galleries and museums included.’ Finally, to return to the “event,” which I first encountered as a word and its definition on reading about the political struggle for economic democracy and social rights between 2003-2007 in France by cultural workers in the seasonal festival industry, the film industry, the theatre industry, etc. (and so places my work within a history of conflict): Remember that the “event’ is what crops up from history – in this struggle - a decision to act on a disagreement with management; sinks back into history – a new agreement is reached between management and workers through protracted negotiation; but is not history – the agreement is history, not the initial decision to act. Now, take that definition and apply it, in the my large paintings, to the “frisson” spontaneously acted on, then the “protracted negotiations” entered into during the “history” of the painting and then exhibited as “completed,” but for me, more truthfully “abandoned;” the initial spontaneous decisions to act while painting is unrecorded in the “history”.
In Lazzarato’s words:
‘The political event returns the world and subjectivity to us. It returns the world to its true nature: the world shows those who have been opened and ripped apart by the event that it is not merely what it is but something in the course of making itself and something to be made. The event gives us an open, unfinished and incomplete world, and in doing so calls on subjectivity, because we can inscribe our actions and exercise our responsibility in this incompleteness, this nonfinitude . . . Like the world, individual and collective subjectivity are not given; they are in the process of making and are open to being made. The event returns the world to us as a “matter of choice,” and subjectivity as a “crossroad of praxis.” What is happening to me there? What can or should I do, and how to start from that place there? Am I responsible for what is going on? Am I responsible for what is going to happen? The event brings subjectivity face-toface with alternatives, decisions and risks. With the event one goes instantaneously from one world to the next, from one mode of struggle to another, where boundaries and meanings are not fully perceived but rather felt as being full of promises and challenges.’
It is along this journey from “frissons,” “events”, “intervals between received and performed movement,” working slowly on my painting from inside these “gaps” in thought, journeying to Nowhere Known, that for me,the “elsewhere,” that Andrew Benjamin writes of, is to be found.
They say I feign or lie In all I write. No. It’s simply that I feel With the imagination. I don’t use the heart. All that I dream or experience, All that fails me, or that finishes, Is like a terrace Looking onto something else beyond. It is the latter that is beautiful. For this reason I write in the midst Of that which isn’t to hand, Free from my surprise, Serious about that which is not. Feelings? Let the reader feel! The poem This by Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese poet (1888 – 1935)
Peter Neilson, Melbourne, June 2019
PETER NEILSON
Drifing south 2013 oil on board 12 x 11.5 cm
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