When the notion of exhibiting at Dimbola Lodge was first mooted, I said 'but I'm not a photographer!' I thought that Julia Margaret Cameron's home was a shrine to her medium. I was speedily disabused of this idea and told that it existed to pay homage to her inventiveness, her courage, her creativity... it didn't take much more to convince me that the spirit of Mrs Cameron lived on and that I wished to contribute and be seen as a part of it.
But what did I actually have in common with her? My sex, certainly, and the difficulties that are associated with it. Much, much worse in Mrs Cameron's day, though, even for a fêted friend of the great. That parallel seemed slightly spurious.
I read the accounts of her work and was astonished at the experimental level of it. The preparations, the chemical knowledge, the danger - the sheer stubbornness of the woman!
It struck me that the main characteristic we shared was that our work was process orientated. From step to step we tread, each one dependent on the success of the preceding with an eye on the one which would come next. This was the aspect of my work I decided to focus on. Like Mrs Cameron, I would make things as if by magic, untouched by brush marks or the sign of human hands - hence the title of the show, Acheiropoietai, things made without hands.
What of content? For her raw material Mrs Cameron used those that were around her. I would do the same. I spend a weekend collecting flotsam and jetsam from the tide lines near the Lodge and took it all back to my studio in London.
Mrs Cameron saw photography as a development of art and as I too believe my output to be art, I decided to use frames. There is a simple reason for this - it announces a piece of art. That decision made, I realised that I had the potential to cast liquids to support the debris of the beaches. Since I wanted to work in a medium I hadn't used before and wasn't too sure about, that might carry danger and that I couldn't predict the outcome of, latex seemed an obvious solution with plaster as another possibility.
Latex is easy to use - you pour a thin layer, allow it to dry, pour another and so on. The main difficulties were: one, that the material behind the frame on which the latex was cast had to be watertight or it simply leaked away: two, that this material had to be peelable-off the dried latex or the translucency was lost: three, that the fumes were fairly toxic: four, that additions to the latex gave it unpredictable characteristics...
I spent several months experimenting and making small test pieces, of which a few are included in the show. Some had to be junked when they fell apart or didn't work for technical reasons - the support might be two weak, the added colour too strong, the fibres too delicate - any number of failures.
Eventually I got the idea and began on the larger pieces. The chosen materials had begun to pall and I figured, in the spirit of Mrs Cameron, that it would be acceptable to use materials that were intensely personal to me. The distance between making marks with found plastics that could have come from anywhere and making marks with (for instance) the medicine bottles of a very sick friend, can be imagined. The polarity itself was energising. In no. 6, for instance, "Memory and Vigilance are Peacocks", I have used toothbrushes as the structure for latex wings into which is cast Ultra Violet paint - so the very specifically personal toothbrushes are contrasted with the symbol of the impersonal, the angel, which is created out of substances that can only been seen under certain conditions.
Work started in plaster for no reason other than that I couldn't afford any more latex. I pay for my own materials - sponsorship was for mounting the show - and I ran out of money. Plaster is cheap. I had been surprised by the beauty of latex and missed it, but plaster presented some interesting possibilities. Its rigidity was useful - in exhibit number 9, "Hero - (anti-clockwise)" the central star-shaped unit can be revolved. I mixed it up with silver pigments to achieve a kind of wet merangue look, which I employed to reinforce the rigidity.
The core idea, that of work made without hands, kept returning. I wondered how one could actually use paint within that parameter. Accordingly I made ice from water and inks and let them melt, slowly... "Covert Carp" 1 & 11 (nos. 13 & 11) are made this way, on woven watercolour paper to add to the possibilities for distortion. "Water, my Lover" 1&11 (nos.17 & 14) are worked in the same fashion with this distinction; that the ice cubes were of Arctic water (that had been frozen in the Arctic) and that the colour was added by melting the ice cubes with hot coffee, made from beans from Mount Kilamanjaro. Heat and cold met to make the image.
Whilst experimenting with these ideas, I found the studio floor becoming more and more beautiful. Dripping ice and inks were making splashes where each little mark was of a different colour, causing some wonderful 3-D illusions. I took advantage of this - the results are "Cut the Blades of Spirit Air" 1 & 11 (nos. 19 & 21) and no. 23, " 'May it be Much to her Glory'(In memory of Izzy)"
In the course of this series, some issues that have always concerned me began to raise their heads again. For instance, in questioning the nature of creativity, sooner or later every artist asks themselves, Did I make this?: Where did it come from?: Did it call me to make it? The techniques I have elected to use minimise my interference in the coming-into-being of the work - they minimise my activity and allow the work the maximum opportunity for becoming itself. You might call this anthropomorphism and you'd be right, but it is a useful starting point for examining the nature of the hunger to make stuff.
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