Jonathan McCree and Paul Statham respond to the extraordinary Caroline Gardens Chapel space with a series of paintings and a soundscape, which will play in the space throughout the weekend. There will be a live performance of music composed especially for the event on each of the two days. The collaboration explores the nature and value of sacred spaces and rituals, whether public or private, sacred or secular. The paintings and music will offer a dialogue with the unique atmosphere and architecture of the chapel.
What: Days on End.
An Exhibition of paintings by Jonathan McCree with a sound installation and performance by Paul Statham.
Where: Caroline Gardens Chapel, Peckham, London. SE15 2SQ.
The Caroline Gardens Chapel is administered by ASYLUM, an arts organisation.
When: Saturday October 22 and Sunday October 23 2011.
Admission Free
Days on End.
A couple of years ago I completed a series of 18 small paintings based on J.S. Bach’s The Art of Fugue. The Art of Fugue, Bach’s last great instrumental work is divided into 18 short sections and each section is based on the same simple melodic theme. I was fascinated by how a simple tune of 11 notes could grow and evolve in a way, which somehow always connected my ear to an awareness of the original melody. The theme is repeated and reversed, turned on it’s head and over-lapped upon itself so that by the end, I felt like my imagination was inhabiting a completely different sound world to the one which had started the piece, yet I was still aware, in an almost archaeological way of it’s root.
At this time, Paul and I were already working together on other projects. Our collaborations seemed to come from conversations and awareness that we shared certain ways of thinking about making things. I asked Paul what he thought about The Art of Fugue and he told me about his interest in the music of Steve Reich and how Reich would loop sound together to create accidental harmonies and dissonances in an endlessly evolving way.In my imagination this way of thinking about making things, whether music or painting seems to have its roots in a very human need for ritual. We are most commonly aware of these rituals when they appear as ceremonies; a church service or a military parade. But I am more interested in prosaic, daily forms of ritual. For example, I begin every day at roughly the same hour of the morning; I drink coffee, read, write, have a shower and then go to my studio. Of course I could also call this pattern a habit or a routine, but to me this ritual beginning to each day creates a rhythm, which frees my mind to begin work. Yet of course each day is also different. These subtle differences, which we remain largely unaware of, accumulate over the days, weeks and years to create an ever- changing narrative, which nevertheless connects back to the sense of a beginning, of who we are.
The way I make paintings inevitably reflects these interests and the way I experience the world. I don’t want to limit myself to one or two kinds of mark making and I find it exciting to find different ways of using paint. I think my paintings have a fictive space where abstract narratives interweave and overlap and I like to play with and stretch what goes into that space, from heartfelt expressive marks to clearly borrowed symbols and motifs. I often repeat marks again and again so that it is not through an act of mind that things evolve but a more physical, act of hand.
A painting will begin with a drawing. I like to draw from life, most commonly a landscape or just what happens to be in front of me. I draw quickly, improvising marks and gestures. I may do many drawings of one subject, borrowing motifs and marks from a previous drawing and re-combining these with fresh thoughts. Initially, I may have a rough road map in mind, but this is usually abandoned fairly early on. I always end up with something, which has travelled some distance from my original thoughts.
When I start a painting I often use Photoshop as if it were a sophisticated photocopier. I can feed one of my drawings into it and flip it around, creating shapes and patterns, which I might never have come up with by hand. I like the way that this takes the making of the painting, briefly but decisively out of my hands, it allows me to relinquish an area of control, enables me to say ‘I don’t know’. This feeling can create possibilities I haven’t thought of, stops me reaching or grabbing for something, which would impose limits, narrow the process down. It keeps the process open and unresolved. I don’t want the painting to be all about what I think I know, a kind of aesthetic game. Beyond an initial set of choices I would like the painting to have much less to do with me. I don’t want it to be a demonstration of some kind of struggle.
Jonathan McCree, August 2011
It took me a while to find a starting point for the pieces of music I have composed for this collaboration with Jonathan McCree. I liked the way he had taken images of his own work and using computer software, created copies and mutations to find fresh points from which to begin again.I remembered listening to Steve Reich’s work, Piano Phase and It’s Gonna Rain in particular. Reich used cassette tape players to send identical pieces of music out of phase.
In my studio I started to layer my own music, placing sounds and melodies one on top of another. I hoped in some way, to interpret Jonathan’s painting procedure. I varied the lengths of each track and repeated phrases over and over again, so that sounds combined in random and unpredictable ways, looping endlessly to create constantly mutating music. For one piece, I recorded myself playing a flamenco style guitar. I layered the track on top of itself 20 times hoping to create a sense of hypnotic movement as the music builds, through a simple, repeated pattern.I also started to make my own sound recordings. I went to churches and recorded the barely audible traces of sound I found in the often, empty spaces. I liked the echoes and resonances and the way a sound from outside the space might sometimes intrude and reverberate. I recorded the sound of a street preacher and lifted other sounds and voices off of the Internet. I wanted to take the sounds of contemporary, living rituals and place them in a site of former worship. I am curious to see how the building responds.
Paul Statham, September 2011
