Futures and Fictions by Simon O'Sullivan

Author:Simon O'Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Futures and Fictions
ISBN: 9781910924648
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2017-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 4. © Daniel Kojo Schrade (2010), Blueberry Hill, video still. Performance: Bayreuth.

I am an artist working mostly with mediums like the body and paint. In many of my performances, I use my body movements to spin a “net” throughout the performance space. At certain locations they get tied together and these intersections serve like synapses where, instead of neurological signals, various sounds get communicated by me talking, singing and creating noise. The “net” then functions similar to the strings of an instrument with the exception that its soundbox is the space.

Devices such as the umbrella that I can literally attach to my body, and extend my body with, are important within my work. As you mentioned, socio-culturally the umbrella has a very rich and complex history and artists seemed to be interested in them long before me. For example, the French painter Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848), who depicted colonial life in Brazil. When I discovered his lithographs, I realised that he included umbrellas in a substantial number of his works. It seems as if at some point the umbrella took over by becoming the main narrator in/ of his works. In one of the pieces there is a servant, holding a closed umbrella. He is not just carrying it for the “master”; he is wearing it. It is almost like a musket, a safety device, a weapon, and as such way more than just a service tool. Although the body of the servant is depicted as much smaller than that of the “master”, extended by the umbrella and positioned in the centre of the print, the servant ends up being taller. We do not know whether this image composition means that Debret consciously considered the subtext of the piece, or whether he was rather a rapporteur, a witness of a moment. Besides its technical practicality — providing shadow, or shelter from rain — the umbrella is certainly a status symbol. Potentially extending the height of a body, marking and extending the space a body can claim while walking or sitting. The Ghanaian Aschanti people use umbrellas as such a signifier, to mark the social status of those who walk or sit within their space. So the dimensions of these umbrellas really matter.

For me painting was never just about depicting an object or a landscape. It is very important for me to go beyond that. So I start with information that comes from my own cultural archive and negotiate these complexities in a limited space, a canvas or a performance space. My work is heavily research-based and nurtured by a complex culmination of information stored in my own cultural archive. One would not necessarily be able to reveal all the layers of information that are present in most of my paintings and performances. Painting allows me to work with layers, I can take advantage of the synergy of multiple interacting layers. If I prime a canvas yellow and, after several layers, end up painting it blue, the yellow will still matter. A colour will generally have a very different presence depending on what other colour is underneath.

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