Open Fragment

In the past year especially, I have seen quite a lot of open calls for online opportunities. As I had recently dealt with destroying a large oilstick work from 1989 but couldn't part (yet) with a number of elements from the painting/drawing (I blogged about it here) the open call for "Open Fragment" was serendipitous! As recent work was requested I wrote to the curators for clarification - while the original work was created in 1989, the fragments created by destroying Sea of Roses could be seen as new works from 2021. 

The curators wrote back to me and encouraged me to make a submission and it was a simple enough process, so I did.

The online exhibition was organised by Pragmata Collective, a UK-based artist/curator duo (Adele Lazzeri and Toby Kidd) who are interested in an experimental approach to curation, which they fully outline in the exhibition statement.

I submitted an image of my piece along with a short statement about it. The various artist statements were submitted to an electronic device which randomly read out parts of statements during the online launch of the exhibition. It was very interesting to hear this electronic mash-up of words, though my computer could not handle the TWITCH site for the duration of the launch.

I retitled this fragment from Sea of Roses as Jetsam. I thought the definition of jetsam as "unwanted material or goods that have been thrown overboard from a ship and washed ashore, especially material that has been discarded to lighten the vessel" was appropriate to my destruction of the original 1989 work and personally lightening my load...

It took me awhile to figure out the numbering system, but that is because I was randomly clicking on the numbers on the site rather than simply looking up the list of artists which was provided.

Sea of Roses

When I first moved to Ireland in the late 1980s, I lived with my parents in their house in the centre of Bray. My room for two years was the middle upstairs room and, unbelievably when I think of it now, it was also my studio. All of the work created for my first solo show in 1989 was drawn and/or painted on the floor between my bed and the fireplace! Sometimes, for very large pieces, I was allowed to take over the house's front room and work on the floor there. In 1989, after my exhibition, I wanted to work very large on an idea inspired by a dream. Sea of Roses, approx 140 cm square, oilstick, 1989.

Even after I left my parents house this large work remained affixed to the wall of the middle room. This room later became my Mum's bedroom after my Dad died and an elder sister with her family moved in. After my Mum's death in 2016 the piece made its way back to me and has been rolled up, taking up space in my studio ever since. At this point the oilstick has permeated the paper (good Canson stock!) making it brittle. It was always destined for purgation, I just had to figure out when and how. In my January clean-up of the studio, my husband set it up to photograph as its time for destruction neared.

There were some scratches through the oilstick medium in different places but otherwise the drawing has held up pretty well over the years.

It was difficult to get the colour nuances, in the roses especially, to show up in the photos.

A picture of the reverse of the drawing, where I signed, dated and titled the piece, shows how the oil has permeated the paper.

I used a ruler to tear up the piece, which took about an hour! I couldn't resist saving about nine of the roses, in their surroundings, as individual keepsakes but otherwise Sea of Roses is now a memory.