I’ve been teaching myself to use spraycans. Murals/sketches in an abandoned farmhouse.
Tag: graffiti
Valediction
I haven’t done any painting since the move. I suppose part of the reason is that I left lots of things unfinished, and it’s hard to get into the mindset to start over on something new. So I’m writing it all out of my system.
(Thanks to Declan Kelly for most of these photographs.The beautiful, non-blurry ones, mainly. The rest are work-in-progress shots from my own records, or video stills.)
This mural. The idea, I may as well explain, was to subvert the usual representations of female people in painting.
First of all, these women are not easy to stumble on. Unlike the half-naked women sprawled all over billboards and magazine racks, they live in the dark – three levels down in a derelict underground carpark, behind a failed urban development project in a coastal suburb. You have to make the journey to see them, almost like a pilgrimage. You have to bring your own light.
Second, they’re a bit threatening. For an unsuspecting visitor happening upon them by accident, for a fraction of a second it’s possible to mistake them for real people, lurking in the dark, looming a little larger than life. (It’s hard to find a context where a half-dressed woman is startling, when women’s bodies are used to sell everything from sports cars to dental floss.)
Third, they’re not passive Odalisques, displaying their bodies for your gaze.
Some of them seem to recoil or turn away, some of them ignore you completely, and even the ones that seem to meet your stare don’t quite connect. Their eyes are white, pupil-less.
They’re not particularly happy to see you. What the fuck are you even doing down here? It’s dark and it’s dangerous. They’re exposed, but you’re the one that’s vulnerable.
Some of them are muscular, masculine, more androgynous than the women you’re used to seeing.
Even the ones that are slight or frail, flanked by more imposing figures, don’t seem interested in or threatened by your presence, even if you’re not exactly welcome. There’s a lot of them. You’re outnumbered.
But still, they have one huge point of vulnerability. These are primarily drawings, rather than paintings – they are mostly chalk and charcoal.
Like so many women before them, they are easily erased.
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I never quite finished the mural. I never could decide what “finished” would look like. I have often wondered what would happen to them, My Girls. I supposed someone would vandalise them, or perhaps maintenance would paint over them, or maybe the rain and seawater would gradually keep leaking in until the whole place was submerged and My Girls would become surly mermaids. (I wasn’t going to do anything to protect them. Women don’t need saving.)
In the end, the powers that be, irked with all the illicit activity happening in the carpark (like music and underage drinking and vandalism and prostitution and car theft), decided to seal the whole place off.
They built a timber scaffold and then, with hilarious diligence, they covered every conceivable entry-way with plywood panels.
Whatever stray cats or lonely mould colonies that were hiding down there, they’ve been left to evolve in isolation. Presumably My Girls are still down there too, left to themselves at last, in an atmosphere even more eerie than before, with only the sound of rain and rushing water and the wind whistling in the grates.
I find this poignant and weirdly satisfying.
So goodbye to the carpark. It belongs to the women now.
Poem.
There is an
Ache
in Here Me
a Strange
Chill and
an Old
Sadness
Still working on the murals in the underground carpark. I did not notice when I was taking this picture, but the silhouette in the background looks like a figure dragging itself across the floor. So goddamn creepy.
I’m pretty sure it’s actually just the outline of a backpack resting on a dimly visible table. I don’t know why there is a table in this place, but it’s very convenient. As is the box in the foreground, and the metal rail fitted to the ceiling (not pictured) to which my magnetic LED light clings snugly. This place is kinda like the Room of Requirement. Whatever you need, it provides. I even found a bottle of still water for washing my brushes, just lying on the floor near the wall. Thanks, bro.
Progress is still slow. The paint I’m using now is thick as tar.
But my girls have legs now.
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Separate project in the same space: I’ve also been working on some choreography. I have no recollection of taking this picture whatsoever, but anyway.
Pointe shoes. Adjusting the light, I guess.
And at a later date (these I do remember):
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When I was leaving, I made friends with a filthy but affectionate stray that lives around there. I’m calling her Kino.
Mural
This was the first piece I started in the disused carpark. (Charcoal, chalk and emulsion paint on concrete.)
I’ve since added a layer of UV sensitive paint, so if you shine a UV light on it, or even just “charge” the paint with a torch for a few minutes, it glows.
Kind of like this.
Of course, almost nobody knows this even exists, much less that it’s UV sensitive, but I’m pretty sure it’s safe to tell your secrets to the internet. Yeah? Alright.
The underground carpark.
It’s very dark down here.
Much of what I’m doing lately revolves around this place. I go down sometimes with friends, who come often to play and record. I’m still working, bit by bit, on this mural, although the weather’s gotten much colder and I can’t hold the chalk for long before my fingers go numb. I’ve also been bringing my violin down here to practice. The echoes are wonderfully rich and very forgiving. I feel less vulnerable when I’m playing, as if the music were a forcefield that I am generating, keeping some undefined threat at bay. It feels powerful. There’s a weird sensation of momentum, slashing the darkness with the violin bow, like some machete-wielding explorer hacking through jungle. Until I stop. Then the silence rushes in and I suddenly feel very exposed.
I’m also slowly working on a piece of choreography for that place. I don’t have much to say about that just yet, but at the moment I imagine videotaping, altering and projecting a solo performance, probably to an audience of no one at all. In general, I prefer any finished work of mine to be several steps removed from the initial impulse. I want to allow for the passage of time. I don’t much care if no one ever sees it. I vaguely imagine some time-distant viewer interpreting its layers, like an archaeologist, but I’m not equipped to make immediate connections with people. I am not a performance artist. I keep myself at a distance.
That’s what draws me to this place: its remoteness. It distances one even from oneself. Something about the dark, it creeps into all the cracks and levers apart all the irregular plates that you have grafted together into an identity. You feel yourself breaking up, like an ice-sheet cracking. You experience everything more purely, each sensation concentrated and isolated, from exquisite animal fear to a lunatic joy.
Whatever happens down there seems to happen to someone else. Whenever I go down to resume work on the Wall I approach it cautiously, curiously, as if it were the work of another hand, a long time ago. A cave painting by a direct ancestor. I am always baffled by signs of other human presence down there – bottles or food or used condoms, smashed lighting or objects moved around. It feels like evidence of time travel or a parallel universe: theoretically possible but so wholly improbable as to make me doubt my own perception. Who the fuck would come down here?
Except me, of course. Except us.