I believe my troubles and your troubles shook hands

Ok, best few weeks in studio - endless endless aesthetic party time - been getting super messy and in the zone and going into the studio with my headphones on and forgetting where I am for hours on end and forgetting to eat even, and getting all wired on coffee cos I can't bear to tear myself away from the paints, inks, glitter, paper and fabric for more then a second. So much fun!

I've been trying really hard to summarise my social and environmental agenda recently, without going into excessive detail - because i'd never sleep if i tried to embark on that path! I find twitter is good for this because of the word limit, and if I had a smart phone i'd use instagram for the same reason.
But anyway here is my twitter: https://twitter.com/PhillyHunt1 and some recent tweets that may provoke research or thought:

I'm soon releasing a new imaginary album called 'From my denim coffin': a white girl attempt to understand the #Blues & its cultural history
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Songs also explore cultural / environmental / human rights impacts of denim culture & rock'n'roll too, & associated #culturalappropriation

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new msg from Bruce: i know he's got sway by being The Boss but shows pop culture (& withdrawal of) spreads messages http://brucespringsteen.net/ 

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character in my #eco doom/#cultural awareness/#punkrock exhib: Molly from Linfen. go 2 @VICE for more info on Linfen

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my film about the risk of idealism & cultural blindness in relation to environment & society... #ArtsEducation #art



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I've also been getting really into my creative self without trying to simmer down my instincts for worry of political correctness or ability to communicate very important social and environmental issues in great detail. I realised that was making me feel constantly a bit crap and like I was underperforming and not making any headway because I was getting so bogged down in how to perfectly express and communicate my position on certain issues such as complexities between racism and climate poverty.
So now i'm looking at different ways, or perhaps additional ways, to unpack social and environmental truths which can run alongside my visual art practice. So i'm all for making my art super aesthetic, but full of references which can be explored in little or great detail, and which can still provoke ideas and thoughts on issues, but which can be taken lightly so as not to scare too many people off. Slowly slowly catchy monkey is my new motto - don't push my own opinions too hard to patronize people through my artwork, but get them enjoying it on surface level, and provide an option to explore further if they want to. My visual practice will be an entry point to other things - writing, podcasts, zine/s, clothing and maybe some music playlists, which will frame certain issues and explore them more fully for any viewer who wishes to do that.
I also like the idea of maybe one day someone buying a piece of my art cos they like it visually, and maybe not knowing as they hang it on their wall that it is full of references and pointers to a certain issues or moment in cultural history. Then maybe one day they will get one of those references and look into the subject!

photo i took from a few years ago - but i love it! lush colours and composition and blocking i think,

This whole plan for myself to enjoy the aesthetic and emotional side of my art more sort of came from all the music i've been listening to recently while I work which I will cover now, because it's so important to my vibe:
These are just a few videos to intro y'all to some of my favourite albums by the artists:

















I just love Matthew Ryan, I think he's the only musician i've been a tireless fan of, considering I first heard him in 2005 or 2006, and have always been amazed by him. Here he is guesting on Drunken Lullabies podcast in which he is just so eternally inspiring, this episode is a very recent one from March this year. He comes in mainly at around 46 mins. There's a lot of beer chat in this episode, so skip to Matthew's bit, and listen to the rest, there's some good chat as well about Paul Westerberg (from The Replacements) and more of my fave musicians.
Matthew Ryan has done tours where he's played at people's houses - I also think that is so cool and has powerful potential for curating and putting on socially engaged gig series with no compromises on sponsorship, mixed messages or transport of equipment.

p.s It is not lost on me that these are all white men from the land of punk and rock, but I can't help my taste - I'm not into politically excavating my taste, I just like what I like and that's that. It helps that they wear some brilliant denim.
Also I realise I say y'all too much.

And last weekend I saw Jared Hart, and Brian Fallon and the Crowes live in Camden and I just nearly passed out it was so brilliant. I seriously wonder why people even need or want to take drugs when they go out, when they could just go see some amazing live music, i've been on a high ever since.
Also I met a Canadian guy in the crowd and we became gig buddies for the night and it's just so cool that music, and especially live music, can make people drop their guard and be so friendly and open and instantly you can get into really intense and fanatical conversation because you're both into the same music. So cool! Pop music = social glue. I'm the new Emile Durkheim, but instead of being a theologian i'm a pop-culture-oligian!?
And one artist whose show I saw recently in Bath at the Museum of East Asian Art who really has an incredible atmospheric vibe and technical excellence in her work is Wu-Lan Chiann. She is a Taiwanese printmaker and ink painter who is just amazing, please look her up. Her use of shadow, light and time of day is so amazing.
Oh, and the 6th episode of Season 5 of 'Girls' which came on TV recently was just so filmic and brilliant and that had strong vibes for me.
I've been doing heaps of reading about Cult TV again and now realising i'm not going to fight my TV admiration - I barely watch much TV but when I do I love it. I think TV, when used properly, is super powerful for engagement and activism.

Anyway, I wanna show y'all everything i've been making in the studio but saving it for surprises at my show in June at The Peckham Pelican.
Also a super cool magazine that looks at art, culture and climate change asked to print one of my projects in their new issue and interviewed me about it, and about what I think culture and art can do for climate change. Watch this space...

And here is a little round up of other things that have been interesting me the last two weeks:

Theaster Gates: An artist form Chicago. His approach to art and not waiting around for people to pay you attention and listen, but to just create your own opportunities and platform for saying and doing what you want to. When I worked for Mexican artist Pedro Reyes on his project 'Sanatorium' at the Whitechapel Gallery, Theaster Gates was exhibiting next to us in the same room but I never got to meet him :(





Absolutely brilliant article which talks about the portrayal of indigenous poverty and living situations by the media, and mistrust of journalists. Links to an amazing journalism story the Washington Post that tries to address these issues.

A bittersweet story of the piano angel man of Edmonton.

And this is an article, which I fear may be directed at people like me, as i'm not of ethnic minority, living in poverty, or a member any other marginalised demographic. Unless you count being a girl or having red hair. Which I don't personally find to be affecting my enjoyment of life, apart from the odd ridiculous comment on the street. The only slight marginal demographic I have ever sat in that has had a big and lasting effect on my enjoyment of life is that i've suffered/suffer with a mental health issue, which I have experienced to a very disruptive but not necessarily very dangerous point.
But as i've said before, please don't eliminate me from spreading some good word just because I'm white/living in a house I pay for myself/employed/British/went to a good school/from a good home etc. I can at least provide an access point for people as fortunate as myself onto issues affecting less fortunate people and communities, because I have direct social contacts with people like me.
But yes - I know I don't know the half of how crap life is for so many people, and yes I know I can't speak for people and situations I have no experience of.

I am actually planning a little interactive piece for my show in June which will lightly touch on the idea that too many of us shy away from upsetting or demanding or tricky situations that might threaten to topple our own smooth (or not!) lives and minds. It will also frame me as someone who cares about stuff but maybe doesn't have the scope of experience to be capable of naturally feeling enough urgency to actively and tirelessly push for a realistic solution. Warning: It will be a bit self-deprecating and I realise that may come across as trying to warrant pity or encouragement from others in a crumby/trendy art show that I paid for with money from my easy jobs (I'm a cleaner, nanny and art technician). But so be it - haters gonna hate.
The piece will be sort of inspired by selfies ;)
So cliche huh. Love a good pop culture cliche for getting the crowds assembled!

Don't misuse your passion

Channelling hatred is a waste of passion.

I was recently reading the comments section on Youtube underneath a documentary about the abuse of Aboriginal rights in Australia. Many of the comments were shockingly (I know this madness exists but it’s still shocking every time) racist towards the Aboriginals in saying that they were useless and they should have all their lands taken away. Then there was a comment by an Irish descendent saying that he hates all English people with a burning passion.

Then I just thought what a waste of all this burning passion! Where does this abusive and negative thinking get anyone? It got the Aboriginals marginalised and abused when the whites thought like that. Now it gets the whites defensive and closed-minded and xenophobic. It’s all pointless ‘passion’. Useful and active passion would be to look ahead and think positively about a globally stable future (socially and environmentally.)

I realise that as a member of a historically demonic nation, out generation will be held accountable and hated by many people that our ancestors wronged through Colonisation. However I think the only way to achieve headway in returning human rights (power, living standards, emotional and physical health, environmental stability etc) to the nations and communities disrupted by Colonialism and it’s legacy, the global population needs to try to exist symbiotically and not in a swamp of hatred for entire races based on either history or on a few bad eggs.

I know that a lot of people whose ancestors were enslaved or displaced or abused will not feel this is possible, but to prejudge all modern white people, or all modern English people is like fighting fire with fire. In regards to emotional expression/closure fighting fire with fire would probably be incredibly therapeutic and certainly the brutal ones among the Colonists deserved it, but to carry on like that now would antagonise the situation by supporting sustained hatred of other races.

Unfortunately the fact remains that the powers that be in many powerful countries are white/Colonist groups and they often (because this is just the upsetting nature of how political appointment works) are not empathetic by nature to all demographics, which means all of us, ALL of us, need to act pro-actively in a positive mindset, leading by example and demonstrating how all demographics, ethnicities, communities (LGBTQ, disabled etc – this isn’t soley about race) can live and work to equal personal independence, community benefit and national stability. Preaching hate is not socially constructive even though our emotions may not agree with this! So please do not eliminate any demographic in their ability or instinct to be empathetic, helpful or kind, be they coloured people, white people, women, men, children, teenagers, OAPs, mentally unwell people, physically disabled, rich people, poor people, comfortable in between-y people, convicted criminals, soft push-overs or anyone else. Even animals. Every living person is born innocent despite what their parents my have done. So keep that as a metaphor in mind and don’t preach hate and be pro-active and be positive.

Here is that youtube video: 

The comments from CJailBreak and Brian Dawkins are atrocious.

And I won't include any of my recent studio work cos it doesn't really fit exactly with what I've just written, but here are some scans and photos of textures i'm using at the moment.

Soap operas (AGAIN!!!) and cult TV

Soap Operas and Cult TV shows are circular economies, if you will.

Part of some TV show’s ‘cultness’ is that they are open to ongoing aesthetic analysis as their history lengthens, and thus they are a reflection of people. Often they have collective audiences to enjoy experiencing and responding to the shows together, whether they sit together in the same room to watch them, or are part of a fan club of sorts, of simply enjoy the idea that others around the country or the world are all sitting down at the same time to watch the same show.

Fans of these shows feedback actively (buy memorabilia, endlessly drop quotes into conversation, take life lessons from them, make fan art/zines etc, re-watch and re-watch) and so the legacy of the TV show plays on its audience’s participation. It’s a feedback loop.

Let me say that again – the legacy depends on our feedback, or our response.

Now think of that in relation to planet earth.

The legacy of planet earth depends on our feedback into it… the way we inhabit our environment. Our response to it.

So the way we engage with cult TV shows and soap operas is a familiar behavioural process, and can offer an insight into a very similar behavioural process that ought to employ in our daily life in the environments of planet earth.

It’s a reciprocal, adaptive process.

The vision of people engaging in cult TV/soap operas can serve up a visual motif around which to construct a social message (possible even political) about care for the environment.

There is a social and psychological agenda in the assembled visuals within and surrounding a TV show. If dissected and analysed, those visuals can bring up a rallying cry of seductive social options for us. We are now presented with the assembled symbolic visuals of our social options. Soap operas are particularly good at this because they are ongoing and situated in everyday scenarios.

As part of my ‘film’ I will include a soap opera which all the characters are a fan of. 
They will gather nightly under the baobab tree in the still heat of the desert twilight to watch it together. They will all hum the theme tune as the opening credits begin.

One of them drinks from her fan mug that had a cheesy picture of three of the soap opera’s characters emblazoned on it. One of them will continually quote familiar turns of phrase that they have come to hear regularly from one of the soap operas longest-running characters. This is twenty minutes of peaceful escapism for them at the end of each day.

Soap worlds are small, concentrated, local in audience mentality but also in content, people become obsessed, or then they’ve never heard of them! It’s a personal attachment and small scene. A local scale. Supportive and caring. Like a small-holding farm. They are sequential and cotton onto real life, and are there for you and keep going. Their broadcasting pattern is that of a serial, sustainable, small-dose one. They are open-ended. This is good as a metaphor for living locally and sustainably on earth.

Soaps are also super accessible and hold a special place in so many peoples’ timelines even if they claim to dislike them. Many of us remember watching them with a parent or grandparent as a child, idealising alongside older generations, all feeling their own on-screen counterpart’s resonance, and all learning. Soaps are familiar - a shared experience, nothing new, nothing risky, nothing uncomfortable or high-brow or demanding.
Soaps have a kind of ‘all under one roof’ vibe; there is something for everyone. They summarise and tie in family and community so easily. This is a vibe of care and sustainable relations; that which we ought to carry through into our environmental lives on earth.

And soap characters test the limits of personal human pomp, expansion and delusion safely, while keeping it all at arms length, and to act as a warning to us all.

But they can also demonstrate perfection in such wonderful light that we may feel ever more seduced, if it weren’t for the episodic trundling and thus predictable flaws of downfall, ruts and demise (and rebirth) of all characters depicted. Perfection is always saturated and counteracted in soap opera, making them all the more safe a viewing experience for out egos, and thus society and the planet.

As Pauline Kael said in her review of the film 'Funny Girl';

"In life, fantastically gifted people, people who are driven, can be too much to handle; they can be a pain. In plays, in opera, they're divine, and on the screen, where they can be seen in their perfection, and where we're even safer from them, they're more divine."

The aim of the soap opera as a decipherable motif in my ‘film’ is to mobilise a personal response in the viewing process and to invite thought. It will act as a sub-text, to be imaginatively extended by the viewers of my ‘film’ (which will be depicted through freeze-frame paintings, prints and drawings, some of which will include written elements in the form of dialogue or quotes, set direction or credits/opening sequences). The soap opera’s location and plot will not be evidently revealed, but will simply exist in a place-less place. This is because a place-less place-ness can be more relatable and subjective, allowing itself to be accessed through a viewer’s personal experience. Perhaps some attention will divert to the context of the artist (me) and the soap opera’s subjective scenarios can play on an inter-textuality with my other work – which is often about our place in the environment, and the power of imagination in learning to behave towards the planet (and our dreams/ambitions). Perhaps I can even rely further on inter-textuality made available to me by famous films or moments of environmental precarity/disaster/salvation such as Exxon Valdez.

An instance where a soap opera is used inside a film is the film ‘Joy’ (2016), where Russell creates a fanciful element to the film by using the ongoing viewing of a soap opera to mirror the ups and downs of the actual film’s main character. (the director)

Overall my ‘film’ and its soap opera ought to function as an immediate signifier experience (possibly embodied experience if senses can be appealed to, which I think I can do!) experience, which one will be invited to deconstruct. This invitation to delve for further meaning can be achieved by many means, namely using cinematic devices in the images to suggest continuing/preceding events outside of the frame, in order to get the viewer’s imagination to work. It can also be achieved by withholding one element of an otherwise full picture, or by offering a strong beginning of a narrative in an otherwise abstract image.

The audience will have to work, and will know that I have some sort of agenda.
It can be a dialectic experience, as indeed is every assemblage of characters in a soap opera or film.

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Passion in cinema:

I also simply want to pay homage to the way cinema-going offers a reflection on our own lives and also an escape from it, so I will use the cinema setting/stage set and film techniques (subtitles, doubling, layering, multiple view points, panning, screen dimensions, lighting and colour, soundtrack etc) to allude to the persuasive power of cinema.

Passionate cinema is when you experience one of two things:

1.     You feel so strongly, and the feeling lingers after you leave the cinema/film ends. You feel you need to call a certain person, do a certain thing, have everyone leave you alone so you can ride the feeling out.

2.     You have a strong sensory journey, but the message/meaning/results is ambiguous and you need someone else to see it, either to help you understand, or for you to be able to ‘own’ that moment you don’t understand or are scared by in your showing it to someone else; your ‘knowing’ of it.

In an interview at the BFI Viggo Mortensen quotes another actor (it isn’t quite clear whom) on what makes a film epic…

- “I want people to wake up in the middle of the night and think that everything they are doing is wrong”.

That feeling of needing to enrich or change your life is amazing.

Drive is such a seductive quality in humans.

If a film can reinvigorate your own drive, then the world would be full of interesting, driven, accomplished, independent, free-thinking people. How wonderful.

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Anyway here's some recent studio work in progress stuff/ 
Themes:
Film opening title sequence / monument to endangered species / blind monk seals of Hawaii / archipelagos / radio power / soap operas (clearly) / pop fashion trends / technology fascinates but obstructs our mobility and proactivity: - we become inert.

p.s listen to the podcast Pop Culture Salvage Expeditions - find it on itunes or on the link. Great resource for artist activists, and of course via the theme of my beloved pop culture!

p.p.s Listen to Brian Fallon's debut solo album 'Painkillers' when it's out on Friday 11th March on Island Records. I feel emotional just reading this review of it by Craig Manning on absolutepunk.net

p.p.s It's Country2Country music festival this coming weekend in London and Glasgow, which i'm going to, so if ya fancy some country pop then listen to Kip Moore, Eric Church's new album, Hannah Aldridge and generally catch up on Bob Harris's Country show on Radio 2. Especially this episode with Thomas Rhett in session, he's great in convo with Bob and super interesting in his writing process.

Oh and I updated my artists statement recently, it was a bit waffley before....