Rachael and Pat in Conversation: 04/09 2014
Pat: If one spends the whole day, struggling away, rubbing things out and removing things, painting over things – purely on the grounds that it doesn’t look right, or it looks like something else, that we don’t want it to look like, or it looks too sweet, or it looks too rough – and then, when it’s right, usually when one’s got really cross and put a rag to it, suddenly you think: Yes! Yes!
Rachael: When you throw a spanner in the works
Pat: Yes, suddenly it hits something
Rachael: But how do you explain that – to someone else? You know, when you’ve found the solution
Pat: I know when I’ve found the solution, but it would be an awful lot quicker, or easier if one had a little bit of a system going. A shortcut to the rather painful… And I do find, that invariably once I’ve got a bit cross with it, once I’ve got a bit bold and once I’ve set a palette knife to it, that it’ll start coming right.
Rachael: Taking that theme of investigation – detective at work – if that’s a good analogy, if you then had to try with whatever images, or artefacts, or jottings down, whatever evidence was required, what would your display of evidence be?
Pat: Because you’ve used this word as ‘evidence’: I suppose that that’s what my painted bits of collage are, my useful lexicon of patterns. I’ve got some favourites, which are the flat colour with the scribble on top, which I seem to like at the moment
Rachael: Which go right back. Look at your resin jewellery from the early eighties
Pat: Yes, thirty years, forty years
Rachael: Yes, the squiggle in solid colour
Pat: And especially a random, torn shape I really like
Rachael: And the placing of those shapes – with their awkwardness
Pat: Yes, having a few of those are quite good to have, as you say, like ‘evidence’. You can quickly refer to them, pop them up, and say ‘What would that look like there?’
Rachael: Are they, as you were saying earlier in the studio, are they shortcuts to expressing some deeper, more intuitive idea
Pat: It’s also a way a fooling myself, since my inner census is for ever saying no, no, no, no, where as sometimes an ambiguous shape or pattern, gets through my inner census and I can put it up and it doesn’t necessarily represent anything specific, yet it could represent just a whole group of – well, it is basically a figurative… the figure’s always there so they do have a role
Rachael: They relate
Pat: The shapes have a role, as props on the theatre stage. It could be a clump of buildings, or a stone, or a pathway, a collection of objects… But I don’t want to specifically say it’s exterior or interior
Rachael: But they could be expressing anything, as you say, in that proppish way. They could be expressing anything from an actual structural thing to a sort of emotional…
Pat: Baggage!
Rachael: Turmoil thing!
Pat: Then you get an occasional horizon line – which again functions in that kind of way, to give a bit of space – ‘cause I do like space, which is another thing, I do like – as I think you do aswell – I don’t like cluttering, that’s why, I think you have a tendency too to be outdoors, as in, I do, I very rarely paint interiors, unless there’s a very distinct doorway somewhere, I don’t like being indoors too much…
Rachael: No, that’s a good point
Pat: Isn’t it interesting – I feel quite panicky
Rachael: Yes, you’ve got those drawings in your sketchbook, where you can see a figure beyond the threshold. And you don’t know whether you’re looking from outside in, or inside out
Pat: I don’t mind doorways. But I’ve never been tempted to do 100% interior. Ha.
Rachael: Nooo, that’s a good point, a very good point
Pat: If I can open a door, I do… I’m notorious for leaving doors open! Unlocked, often! I do need to be able to escape.
Rachael: You need the sense of space?
Pat: The ’something bigger’ outside. Not being confined.
Rachael: In my case, I’m aware that it’s the sense of… well, I imagine ‘the beyond’, which comes with an emotion, it comes with a sense of anticipation, that there’s possibility
Pat: Around the corner, over the hill
Rachael: Yet indoors it’s all very…
Pat: It’s all a bit close
Rachael: I mean, I love being at home, snug as bug, all that sort of stuff, but my sense of the world, even my own ‘inside my head’ world, it comes with – I was going to say landscape – but it’s not necessarily landscape, it’s ‘outdoors’.
Pat: Possibilities, potential…
Rachael: A path can take you somewhere, a garden takes you somewhere, doesn’t it? Your paintings are very clearly, your collages, your… they are very clearly of a sense of place…
Pat: And yet I never do landscape as such, but the sense of place is always outside. The other thing of course, that has helped me get more colourful recently, which, just technically, I was getting very dirty with my paintings, because I try and paint everything simultaneously, with three brushes – I don’t know – it just got dirty, whereas playing around with these bits of collage makes up my mind that I want a certain colour there, and I can apply it, specifically, rather than…
Rachael: And you don’t lose any sense of being lost in that kind of process of? No, ‘cause in producing the collage, you’re still… enjoying that, what I call: colouring-in world?
Pat: It’s wonderfully no pressure, because you’re just dealing with one element, you’re not dealing with loads of elements. And they’re all dispensable, so there’s no pressure.
Rachael: Back to the idea we were discussing: the ‘Fact/Fiction’ thing – the idea of you being restrained to a tabletop display cabinet – it means that you’re restrained by size, a tabletop would be, what a metre by two metres long? It can have objects in it, it can have artefacts in it, little paintings, little drawings, sketchbooks, a variety of elements to convey…
Pat: Yes, the elements, the lexicon of bits, that I always repeat.
Rachael: Are you quite excited by the idea of exploring this? This collection of ‘evidence’ that make up your working process? Do you know in advance what you might come up with, do you ‘see’ the display, or are you just confident that something will emerge?
Pat: Oh yes. I’m confident something will emerge. I think I’ve developed – well, I feel comfortable in being able to display all the elements, and the fun bit will be putting them all together. And what’ll be quite fun about that, is that they could be assembled in a whole variety of ways, they could change every time you moved to a different space. You could put them together in one configuration in one instance, and they could become a completely different configuration in the next, they could almost be site-specific, or group specific, or purpose-specific
Rachael: I’ve been thinking about the right environment, and thinking about libraries – there’s an element of trying to tick boxes, you know, the strategic objectives in an application for funding; reaching diverse communities (who might lack arts provision), rural communities, local organisations..
Pat: But every group have very specific needs – I mean, there are public libraries – but there are also research libraries, presumably in scientific establishments, or Plumpton Agricultural College would have a very different library
Rachael: Yes, that’s a very good idea! You could reach all sorts of people
Pat: Yes, not just the socio-economic kind of ‘community’.
Rachael: Well, I like the idea of, or I had imagined – well, once you know that you’re not showing work in a gallery setting, in an ‘exhibition’, in a funny way, I feel, you’re more pressed to make sure ideas are communicated… you know, you can’t depend on your audience already being…
Pat: Half way there
Rachael: Knowing the vocabulary. And so I like the idea of – the original idea – of displaying, you know, local history in the village hall, that you’ve got an audience who
Pat: well, it’s got to be accessible, and if you know vaguely what the specialist area that group are involved in
Rachael: Yes, and with half a dozen display cabinets, for example, each housing a different artist, or writer, or whoever’s working on this theme… I just love the idea of not only this travelling display, but as part of its journey, there’s no reason at all why, as you suggested, there’s gonna be different libraries, that we couldn’t equally organise a workshop or a symposium, as more opportunities arise
Pat: Well, I would maintain, as has been expressed actually, in the media, about education not just being about the three R’s and that really, equal emphasis should be given to, as has been widely demonstrated, is dance. And you can hear: oh, surely dance is an add-on, hardly a necessary facility that should be developed in kids at school, and contrary to that assumption, people have been saying: no, no, that should have equal weight to maths. Maths – dance? Could that be possible? Yes! Because after all, we all inhabit a body, and all of us share that experience. Similarly, I would’ve thought, even if this exhibition was displaying in a scientific establishment, or the agricultural college, where Art isn’t necessarily on the curriculum, it could free-up some thinking outside the box, whatever subject your main discipline is, this is essential to the creative process, which, as we believe, everybody should be thinking creatively.
Rachael: The other thing that’s been suggested considering, is any kind of partnership – and you’ve just come up with research libraries – and my brain just thought: Ooo, that’s gonna be fascinating. We can find parallels with psychology, with memory and law: thinking about the reliable/unreliable witness and I was reading, it’s surprising how you can be seen as unreliable. Just imagine getting the Daily Mail treatment, I mean: I have it here that you suffered from depression…
Pat: Oh yes, an immediately ‘unreliable’ person. Or an unmarried mother, with a child… Quite unreliable!
Rachael: Yes, or from a broken home, socially stigmatised AND unreliable! All these things that theoretically, possibly historically, make you appear unreliable – but then, equally, “oh, you teach in higher education, you must be very reliable?” And how bizarre that is, that categorisation of stuff, of which we all know – although, you and I have had conversations before about how our memory of an event…
Pat: I don’t think anyone completely invents scenarios, that doesn’t happen, but I think, obviously we give them slants and there are lots of factors that can be changed in order to improve our own narratives. But I think there’s a great danger in talking about unreliable narratives to suggest that people have completely invented an untruth, um, especially with say, child abuse cases, you know, that is what is being used to dismiss…. but I do accept that memory is very unreliable in terms of its exactness, of time and …
Rachael: Yes, but those stories, when someone’s hijacked your memory, you know when you remember something, and donkey’s years later, you discover that someone else claims it as their memory, and you’re sure that they’ve heard the story, and imagined themselves in the starring role. I mean, it happens daily, weekly, you can describe an event or incident, possibly of complete in-consequentiality and moments later you hear it retold with the new narrator tweaking, embellishing, exaggerating. They say ‘I’ and you’ve been cut out of the loop, no longer part of the story you told… I’ve been short-cutted
Pat: But for the purposes of telling the story, they may be correct, it may have been laborious to actually tell the whole, to have to say: well, actually, this isn’t my story but…
Rachael: Yes, but theses little omissions, we take in our stride
Pat: But again, the story, the whole point of the story, might be good, and worth telling, regardless of the detail – and it’s true, but for minor detail of who was involved
Rachael: Yet if it’s your own story, you can feel that your memory has been hijacked – and although, well, this is running off at a tangent, but it’s all cropped up as a result of thinking about… Fact/Fiction…
Pat: Well, you can have all the same ingredients of truth, but the arrangement of them
Rachael: Yes, the truthful element, the factual element, is the story… although, on paper, it can look fictional; because, no, it wasn’t that person, or they didn’t say that, or
Pat: And this lends itself beautifully for workshops where other people can use your ’true’ elements and rearrange them, and it’ll actually tell a story from their perspective
Rachael: I do like the idea that as a project, that it would have, could have, a number of workshops and discussions – I like the idea of discussions – I don’t know who the ‘panel’ might be in a discussion, but imagine, if you could speak to somebody who deals only in FACT, or you equally had someone who was well versed in FICTION, a novelist – that we discuss this stuff, how important is fact in telling the truth, what place does fiction have in telling the truth? ‘Cause we’re well used to novels, paintings, films…
Pat: Well, people often say, don’t they, that novels can often tell the story truer than documentary
Rachael: Like David Hare, the playwright, talking about politics and things – so I think, it’s like a snowball kind of project, because, as you said, there’s no reason why the display itself doesn’t evolve as it tours? As you realise more truths about your working practice – or somebody may, for example, their display might be a series of objects
Pat: or different media, it could be sound and collages, it could be noises and speech and so on, and all different kinds of landscape
Rachael:
Pat: Sorry, I keep hijacking it with collages, because that’s what I use
Rachael: Nooo, not at all – well I’ve been collecting images of display cabinets, for inspiration, or just to – did you see, at the end of the document I sent you, images?
Pat: Yes, yes I did
Rachael: There were those taller cabinets, sculptural… the fact that I see mine, as showing bits of evidence, is just the way my brain’s working
Pat: I keep thinking, just as a visual thing, you know these people with Ebola, those cabinets with gloves
Rachael: Yes, the man in the Royal Free Hospital
Pat: Well, the whole point of those cabinets is: Do Not Touch, well imagine if you could put your hands inside those gloves and move things about? You wouldn’t be able to take anything out, or steal anything, but
Rachael: For me, I think I got locked into the process of painting, a series of painting, so partly I think a lot of what this proposal is about, is forcing myself to think – and we’ve talked a lot before – why not an installation? Why not a performance?
Pat: Yes, we cling very loyally to paint
Rachael: Which is why it makes me think: what is it about making a picture? When you talk about the ‘realising’ of…
Pat: Your palette
Rachael: Your lexicon
Pat: Of shapes and textures and techniques
Rachael: Yes, you’ve developed your own language, which is very you – the way you frame them, the way they’re tight into the side of the canvas. Brilliant!
Walk and talk: Tate Modern: Mira Schendel & Saloua Raouda Choucair
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