Yes, I have resorted to the dictionary,
in part to clarify in my own mind the grammatical range of the
word "abstract" and its close relations between the
words abstinent and abstruse. With the twin benefits of hindsight
and the experience of the creative interactions between the curators,
writers and artists in the exhibition <abstractions>, this
piece is an engagement with my own process of abstraction, to "draw
away" from some of the ideas that were the motivations to
bring the works and ideas together in this context.
Firstly, the plurality of the title <abstractions> was
intended to suggest the multiplicity of implications through
which the creative processes of the artists involved could be
manifested in the range of artistic styles and traditions encompassed
by the project, and hopefully, to reveal another level of cross-cultural
potentiality worthy of critical examination.
Selfishly, from my own point of
view, I was keen to see how the work of an artists as diverse
as Julie Gough and Phaptawan Suwannakudt would force us as viewers
to consider the rubric of <abstractions> as casting a new
light on creative processes, their form and content, and the
divination of meanings derived from cross-cultural similarities
and differences. Abstract art, it seemed, elicits such specific
cultural identification with Western Modernist culture of the
twentieth century, that it is almost too culturally insensitive
(imperialist?, colonialist?) to be applied to the arts of other
cultures. "Abstract Aboriginal Art", for instance,
now offered as a potential art-historical category, is still
considered politically and conceptually problematic, as if art-for-art's
sake or abstract ideas and practices was alien to the culture
of indigenous Australians. On the other hand, if the word 'abstract'
is considered as a verb, the limitations of its canonical referents
within a globalised modernity may be put to one side in favour
of the implications of its processual commonalities across widely
different cultural traditions and practices.
In this context 'abstraction' implies
the dynamic processes of conceptual exploration of forms, materials,
and languages independent of the specific styles and traditions
within which a particular artistic practice may be located. Nobody "owns" the
processes of abstraction which characterise creative interactions
between thought and matter, matter and form, theory and practice,
the intangible and the concrete, or form and representation -
all apparent antinomies which define abstraction by what it is
not, thus leaving its explanatory potential as a common ground
for the exploration of cultural difference.
In relation to the production of
works of art (itself a concept with specific cultural origins)
the potential for interpretation offered by the consideration
of abstraction as process, rather than as outcome, provides a
particularly rich source for articulation of both singular, independent
meanings, and identity as well as those concerns which may be
common territory for aspects of all creative practices.
Consider, for example, the formal
material qualities of a work like Julie Gough's work "Intertidal",
(2003), which was produced onsite for the exhibition. This is
a work which, on the surface, fits all the criteria for being
understood within the canon of abstract painting. It is non-figurative
and apparently self-referential. Even the implications of the
title - which suggests its references to representation of that
most liminal zone in the physical landscape between earth and
ocean - does little more than decoding its forms and structures,
rather than fixing our perceptions to that particular fragment
of the physical world. Seen as process art, this work tells much
more, and reveals more of its autobiographical character, as
Gough transforms the ground-up mineral and vegetal matter into
paint, laying it on the surface like lines of text on a page,
creating symbols and metaphors which like all works of art, mark
the author's experience of a particular passage through time.
In this sense all works of art
are both abstract and representational, depending on the interpretation
of their visual cues - whereby the choice of matter, and its
manipulation into whatever form the artist devises carries specific
associations and values, and enables the artist to articulate
their specific ideas and meanings. In all instances (whether
in the highly non-figurative references in the work of Gough
or the more literal allegorical narratives of Suwannakudt) meaning
is formulated through material processes in the manipulation
of intangible and concrete forms in a kind of dance between form
and representation. What makes these works compelling is the
visible evidence of the artist's experimentation with matter
and the inspiration they convey for the transmission of the work's
meanings at multiple levels of signification in its passage from
matter to form. Translation of such meanings across cultures,
and the complexities of legibility of an artist's intentions,
may only reveal itself slowly over time, and in relation to a
host of contextual features by which we learn to understand the
forms, materials, and subject of art.
The study of abstraction as a processual
mode common to all artistic practice may provide us all with
a means of understanding what is common to diverse cultural practices
and traditions. At some point or other, the study of any artefact
seeks to identify and interpret the characteristics which enable
it to signify its meaning in forms legible to others. We "read" its
formal qualities (colour, texture, gesture, shape, rhythm) as
a kind of syntax which enables us to assess the processes of
abstraction in the creation of meaning. We also find ourselves
assessing the nature of the process, whether as process-for-process'
sake, for its emphases, for the enhancement of associations and
qualities, or for the mediative character of its crafting.
Is not the ultimate value of all
projects of this kind to be gauged by the amount of new work
they generate? As a piece of unfinished business, the experience
of working on ideas such as these through the interaction with
the artists in <abstractions> has suggested new pathways
for the evaluation of contemporary artistic practice across distinct
cultural boundaries.
Nigel Lendon
