"Fictions" Exhibition

Helen Dearnley

Labyrinths 2011

“Fictions”

18 September – 24 September Gallery @ St. Martin’s, Lincoln

This new body of work marks a departure from previous themes in my art practice, an instinctive move towards more sculptural and architectural work illustrating the writings of Jorge Luis Borges. My conscience wrestles with the fact that I initially intended to create a series of illustrations, so the work is a memory expressed sculpturally, as sculptural illustrations. Illustrations will develop from this work.

From the Garden Of Forking Paths, I have expanded upon the original text to incorporate personal memories of feeling at the moment my father died, that I was transported to the Pavilion Of The Limpid Solitude, which became a greenhouse, a labyrinth, a memory and an encyclopaedia.

My earliest memory of Dad is as perspicuous as the glass panes of the veridian pavilion in which it resides, running through seemingly endless greenhouses as darkness pursued seditiously through those vast steel and kryptonite prisms.

The greenhouses were composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite forest of steel and glass, each rectangle multiplying the perception of space by its repetition, with beds of plants growing within, and interspersed with irrigation channels that broke up the consistency of the horticultural flower beds, where growth is perpetually illuminated by the twilight of the next greenhouse. I inferred from the greenhouses that they were infinite, those glass cathedrals of Mother Nature’s son.

Works

All prints are digital imagery on mirror board with foil

“Fauna Of Mirrors” and “Funes The Memorious” 2011

“The Pavilion Of The Limpid Solitude” 2011 Mixed media

“The Garden Of Forking Paths” 2011 Found objects

“Fauna Of Mirrors” 2011 Foil, Chinese lantern, text from Jorge Luis Borges

“Funes The Memorious” 2011 Foil, rebound book

“The Alicanto” 2011 Found objects

Helen Dearnley 2011 character from "The Garden Of Forking Paths"

Helen Dearnley 2011 

"Funes The Memorious"

Digital print on mirror board

Helen Dearnley 2011 

"The Fauna Of Mirrors"

Digital print on mirror board

Helen Dearnley 2011

"The Pavilion Of The Limpid Solitude"

Found objects

Helen Dearnley 2011 character from "The Garden Of Forking Paths"

Helen Dearnley 2011 Untitled

Helen Dearnley 2011 

"The Fauna Of Mirrors"

Sculpture

"...the Fish was a shifting and shining creature that nobody had ever caught but that many had said they had glimpsed in the depths of mirrors." Jorge Luis Borges "The Book Of Imaginary Beings"

Helen Dearnley 2011 

Untitled

Found objects

Helen Dearnley 2011

"The Pavilion Of The Limpid Solitude"

Found objects

Helen Dearnley 2011 

"Funes The Memorious"

Found object - reappropriated diary

Helen Dearnley 2011 

"Alicanto"

Mixed media

Holidays, Research trips, and upcoming Fictions exhibition

It's been some time since my last exhibition, and I realised I hadn't blogged since then. I've been busy applying for various art events without much success, and it saddens me that these events are promoted as hosting very talented artists, but as I'm never included, that makes me think this is untrue, which is a negative thing. So I keep quiet, rather than post negative experiences, and wait for something more positive to happen.

The main problem I seem to have is having very ambitious ideas for work that require more funding than is available. 

I feel that I possess a wealth of creativity and artistic expression just waiting to be discovered, that needs investment to make it all a reality.

I've been off work over the summer holidays concentrating on my other full time but otherwise unpaid job of being a single parent. I've had the expense of brand new school uniform, as the school has gone to an academy, which is Kafkaesque for making parents spend what savings they've made not on a holiday, but yet more school stuff.

The most I could stretch to in this age of austerity, or as I call it: government sanctioned financial abuse, was a trip to London to see the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designed by Peter Zumthor http://www.serpentinegallery.org/architecture/

The above photograph was expertly taken by my son Brett, 
aged 12

The Pavilion was recommended by Apparatjik via twitter/Facebook, and I also visited the gallery to see 

Michelangelo Pistoletto 
The Mirror of Judgement 

which runs until 17th September.

It was the pavilion that inspired me, as I'd been busy in my studio creating work for the upcoming LAN "Fictions" exhibition this September, for which I wanted to move away from previous work and illustrate the writings and theories of Jorge Luis Borges. 

However, I've found myself making small scale sculptures, and in particular, the Pavilion Of The Limpid Solitude, which is from the essay The Garden Of Forking Paths. 

For this, I imagined the pavilion as a greenhouse, a book, a labyrinth, and a memory. 

However, I did intend to create a series of illustrations, but my concentration has lost focus due to a dispute I'm unfortunately engaged with with the mobile phone company Orange.

I'm considering whether to include this in the exhibition, in the same way that Tracey Emin showed her "Bed" after being asked to exhibit work and being ill. Barbara Walker made work to highlight how her son kept being stopped and searched by police for what she thought were racial motives, so this kind of work can have a powerful effect. It isn't what I intended to exhibit at all, and I'm not entirely sure whether I should give Orange or any of these companies associated the publicity, but I am being adversely affected by it, so I wish to make my opinion clear.