Artists talk

Tony Mighell
‘it’s mostly drawing’
Sheffer Gallery Darlington
Sat 4 Mar 2017 final day of Exhibition

I would like to keep this as informal as possible; more like a chat or group conversation so interrupt, ask questions, disagree and generally join in.

I was going to title this as

Destination unknown/I don’t know/Ill probably contradict myself

I’ll start by saying I distrust the word art. It is too easily coopted by the institutional and political for their own ends; I see it as a term applied to practitioners often historically and best not used by them; I like Barnett Newman’s statement ‘art is to artists as ornithology is to birds’

But for me there is a real mystery in good painting; Morandi, the best of Pollock, the small green Barnett Newman in the collection of MOMA, Emily Knangware , the drawings of Alec Baker I hung as part of Desert Mob in Alice Springs in Sept 2016, late Ken Whisson; why do these make or have such impact on me? There is a mystery, a magic that is very hard to explain

The other big mystery is how I arrive at results in the studio; I rely so much on intuition in the process of making; how can you talk about this? How can explain a process that relies so much on intuition

For 17 years I worked at the MCA Sydney in and around the installation of art; from humble installer to coordinator and finally to overall Manager of the Installation Dept. I worked with big names and big exhibitions; Chuck Close, the Japanese animation and video artist Tabaimo, Yoko Ono, Canadian photographer Jeff Wall, Anish Kapoor, Ken Whisson, Rafael Lozano Hemmer, Michael Stevenson, Lofty Bardayal, Annie Liebovitz, Olafur Eliason, Yayoi Kusama, Yinka Shonibare and many others

All that time I have continued to do my own work, mostly small works on paper; so I was pleased when I came out of there to be able to spend a lot more time in the studio. When I shut the door and start to work there is very little of the works and artists I had been involved with at MCA that hang around inside my head. When I start to work the things that feed me are painters and painting.  my mentors Roger Kemp, Bea Maddock, Frederick Thursz; my time at the NY Studio School; my immersion in the history of painting. But again I come back from these tit bits and anecdotes and ask how can I discuss a process that relies so much on intuition; I would prefer to mention some of the personal strategies/steps/technical means/thinking I use when I am working and how I work to evolve the picture.

There are

Marks
Lines
Figuration denied
Cancelling out
Opening up
Breaking down or breaking in or breaking out
Crossing the edge
Veiling
Smashing destroying
Fucking the whole thing up
Rhythm; the idea of being a machine; machine rhythm

So these are strategies I call on when I am working but still there is that constant unknowable to the creative process

In the studio I listen to music, mostly classical and in that, mostly contemporary classical; I read and write poetry and  have a few quotes on my wall at any time

At present

Dylan

‘I don’t know how I come to songs, you know. It’s not up to me to explain- I don’t really go into myself that deep, I just go ahead and do it. I’m just trying to find a place to pound my nails’

Pater

‘All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music’

Christopher Wall

‘With Jean-Michel or Picasso, the fact they could do it so easily is what makes the work, in the end so great. They had absolute fearlessness. If you are not fearless about changes, hen you won’t progress’

And finally I want read a quote by Peter Schjeldahl in an essay on Agnes Martin

‘She knew herself profoundly because she had to. In a marvelous 1973 essay, ‘On the Perfection Underlying Life’, she coolly contemplates the ‘panic of complete helplessness’, which ‘drives us to fantastic extremes’. But the problem produces its own answer. She concluded that ‘helplessness when fear and dread have run their course, as all passions do, is the most rewarding state of all’

Thank You