We were delighted to meet Kevin Sinnott today – he came to see the reproduction of his ‘Running away with the hairdresser’ which we had painted on the outside windows of y Gaer to engage with the wider public who use that space.
The evening began with an engaging conversation with the group who hang out by y Gaer at the end of the school day. They keep commenting that what we are doing is “so cool”. They are also very happy to share “their” space with us. They suggested we continue the painting – maybe in a “what happened next?” story line across the rest of the y Gaer windows. We thought that was a great idea. A couple of the group also came into y Gaer with us to see the original painting in the current exhibition.
Meanwhile, we decided to take a different tack with the painting tonight. We cleaned off some parts which we weren’t happy with and then, having asked for the youngsters’ advice on whether we should try to copy the colours exactly or “do our own thing”, we followed their strong recommendations that we should do our own thing.
We are much happier with the result when we left for the night.
The Larks & Ravens are reproducing one of Wales’ National artworks onto
the outside windows of y Gaer each
evening in Brecon this week (5-9th September). The painting is
‘Running away with the hairdresser’ by Kevin Sinnott currently on
exhibition at y Gaer. The National Welsh Collection of art belongs to everyone
in Wales so we wanted to bring it outside for everyone to enjoy.
Our reproduction is getting more challenging as we grapple with the mismatch
between the colour palette of paints selected for the original artwork and the
bluer palette of our large digital print.
Here’s how we ended Day 2..
The Larks & Ravens are reproducing one of Wales’ National artworks onto the outside windows of y Gaer each evening in Brecon this week (5-9th September). The painting is ‘Running away with the hairdresser’ by Kevin Sinnott currently on exhibition at y Gaer. The National Welsh Collection of art belongs to everyone in Wales so we wanted to bring it outside for everyone to enjoy.
The day started with carefully measuring and cutting the large digital print to slot into each inside window pane.
Unfortunately, we discovered the large print has a more dominantly blue palette than the original artwork and printed poster. This has created a mismatch with the set of paints we purchased based on the orginal dominantly yellow palette. Added to this, the y Gaer windows are blue tinted.
We are exploring ways to use colour mixing and overlaying of paints to address this challenge.
We are finding that these colour challenges, as well as the painting itself, are leading to conversations and ideas from passers by.
Some of whom are keen to help…
Carefully tracing the artist’s original brushstrokes.
The evening came to a rather premature end with a sudden heavy downpour. This is how far we’d reached… The reflections of Brecon add to the visual interest… was Brecon maybe where the couple were running away to?
Visitors posted their responses to this question – here are some examples…..
“The ruling class”
“The 1% Government but also us as consumers and voters”
“Poeple writing the story”
“God”
Depends what you mean by lie”
“within us”
Who is in the dock for climate change?”
We wonder … are the illuminated busts gods? Do they see themselves as above the law?”
Where do you feel most comfortable sitting?
People felt differently when sitting in different positions in the court… jury members? attorneys? reporters? the judge? Each bench has a different feel and different view of the rest of the court. One person remarked on how sitting in the public gallery at the back felt more comfortable as you felt free of responsibility or delivering judgement.
Who is writing the story?
Who is writing the narrative which is shaping my view of the world?
So in order to ‘stay safe’ we need to protect ourselves from
the air we breathe through nose and mouth,
the air that we move through that might have Covid 19 moving through it too, looking for wet mucous perhaps in our eyes
the surfaces we touch on which Covid 19 may have landed and which we may inadvertently transfer to our eyes,nose or mouth
In short sensory organs that impact on communication
smell
taste
touch
sight
Only hearing is left and we need to listen carefully, having possibly lost information from those other senses as we put on masks, face shields and gloves. How hard it must be to help the sick and dying, the isolated and lonely, the confused and frightened. But the sense of hearing can be honed. As I listen now to the sounds around me, it changes my breathing and stills my busy mind.
A small space opens up for, using Dylan Thomas’s words, to maybe let another thought to ‘creep or flash or thunder in’
Forms of life get very small, I am unsure but I think that viruses are the smallest. Strands of ribonuclei acid , RNA,wrapped up in a coat to protect themselves when not happily reproducing in some other living organism. So here is a highly magnified image I found on the internet
What do I know about this Covid 19?
As viruses go it is quite large and heavy reducing the distance it can easily travel through air
It invades lung cells of humans where it happily reorganises things so it can reproduce itself. I think it kills the cells it invades, taking over the reproductive mechanisms of the cell to make more of itself.
It has swept across the world getting into human bodies via their mucous membranes in noses, mouths and eyes .
It gets there in a droplet of moisture coughed or sneezed by an infected person, landing on a surface where another host human transfers it to their mouth or nose or eyes where it can move in our mucous off into lung tissue
Lots of people get infected and survive after an unpleasant time of fever and coughing
Some people die
The mathematical models indicate that the rate of spread is fast because every one person can infect three others, those three then infect another three each and so on
Reducing physical contact slows the rate of infection, the virus has nowhere to go
‘Lockdown’ has been effective in slowing infections
But ‘Lockdown’ is creating more problems both now and almost certainly for the future
Things that are changed
Our behaviour towards one another, can we care, can we still find ways to communicate, touch and soothe?
Or are we gradually seeing the fault lines opening both at an individual and social level?
Our attitude to some of the lowest paid workers in our societies, people who keep us clean, help us when we are ill, care for us in old age and often when we are very young, move us around on public transport, grow and deliver our food, keep the lights on and water running, bins emptied and sewers unblocked, bury the dead and deliver the newborn, the list is long, people on it invisible, until they are not.
Like that tiny virus
So how am I going to live with the fear of dying? As I write that I think it sounds like an oxymoron. I know that being alive means that I have to die.
and the economy
This seems even harder to unpick. If those with wealth have 42% of it from private pensions where did that money originate?
Somehow the conversations around fairness and furloughing, value and money, money and wealth, education, inheritance and upbringing merge into a tangled web.
A little like tracing the spread of that tiny virus.
What steps do I need to take to untangle the knots?
Each one of us may have a different answer
Right now we are denied the chance to physically sing, dance and feast together
Right now some people are working in difficult conditions, with lack of sleep and lack of solace
An abbreviated version of a quote from Morgan Friedland, C20th economist used to illustrate that now might be the moment to take up the idea of a universal basic income for all.
A potentially less costly system than our current benefits schemes.
The corona virus, Covid 19, was looking for connections is this one?
During the Covid-19 lockdown, we 3 Larks & Ravens have created space 2 days a week to work together/apart in exploring and responding to Covid-19 life in all its pain, weirdness and disruptive possibilities.
We are staying focussed on our core interests of value, money and how to upend and rework capitalism away from economic growth fuelled by material consumption and towards better redistribution of wealth to support the common good.
We are trusting in art as “resistance to the logic of making sense” and in drawing and making as a way to gain insight.
We hope our work may trigger different thinking and conversations across a wider audience.
We started by exploring ways to make connection with the outside world from our individual locked down isolated states – high chairs, prancing lambs, sunflower seeds, high rise flats and floating messages on a canal.
Then, rather than concentrating on what we were cut off from, our interest shifted to how we could use this beached and cut-off state to explore the opportunities for change – in valuing, money and capitalist policies – which Covid-19 might enable….
How could we ask people what they would like to see change post Covid-19?
What would their language tell us?
What sacred cows are getting burned?
What might the new forms of value exchange happening between neighbours and friends point to?
How would the recognition of who our key workers actually are change how society pays them?
How might Priti Patel’s point based immigration system change?
Might Universal Basic Income actually happen? What would it change?
What can we, as artists, do to help trigger wider conversations?
For a while, as a cognitive psychologist, I’ve been working with my 2 artist colleagues to explore questions and trigger new thinking and conversations. They have introduced me to a different, arguably more visceral, language of drawing and making as a way of exploring and understanding the world. Outside the safety net of words, it often feels alien for me, uncomfortable and even crazy but insights emerge which I know I wouldn’t have encountered through my normal, more analytical, roots.
In the Autumn we had the privilege of meeting two South Koreans from the Science Walden Insititute at the Hothouse residency at Dartington Hall. We were fascinated by their Faecal Standard Money project capturing people’s faeces in their specially designed toilet and converting it into biofuel which is worth money and the people can be paid in kind for their natural excreted “waste”. What a wonderful challenge to our capitalistic models of value.
We, the Larks & Ravens would like to continue those conversations. Today, I tried to express that by asking Google to translate our wish into South Korean. I then attempted to draw by hand the (to me) alien script character by character. It was hard. It required intense concentration. Was I copying the shapes, the length of each line, the spacing accurately enough? Was I conveying the right meaning or had I just changed it inadvertently? Was I missing some subtlety of expression? Had I said something offensive or wrong or just difficult to understand? How distorted would my message be when it reached a native speaker? I don’t know.
And then I puzzled why we think we understand each other when we listen or read each other in English. We say it’s our shared or “native” language but to what extent is the meaning intended really shared? I certainly never attend as carefully and anxiously as I did with these unfamiliar characters? I usually think “that’s OK, I caught ‘the drift’ … but did I?
What can we, the Larks and Ravens, learn from sharing questions about value, money and Capitalism with those who speak to us in other tongues? What does it teach us about drawing as a language to be shared and understood by others?
(Original Translation: A desire to work with others who share similar questions but explore in different languages – drawing, words, music, making, doing..)
An abbreviated version of a quote from Morgan Friedland, C20th economist used to illustrate that now might be the moment to take up the idea of a universal basic income for all.
For a while, as a cognitive psychologist, I’ve been working with my 2 artist colleagues to explore questions and trigger new thinking and conversations. They have introduced me to a different, arguably more visceral, language of drawing and making as a way of exploring and understanding the world. Outside the safety net of words, it often feels alien for me, uncomfortable and even crazy but insights emerge which I know I wouldn’t have encountered through my normal, more analytical, roots. 
The Larks and Ravens 