Alas, farewell
I have loved you in vain.
(After Echo and Narcissus)
In the new body of works that collectively compose Nachtlied, or ‘Night
Song’, Nick Fox has moved away from the Objets d’art that have
dominated his practice past. Forsaking the private coded vernacular and
the compounds of contradiction that adorn the works of Phantasieblume,
Fox has turned to a more personal, more direct and in turn a more
ambiguous language. Although meticulous craft and intricate decoration
have in some sense given way to more direct inscriptions of personal
emotion, these works nevertheless continue the courtship with the
intractable themes of longing and loss. Both more subdued, and
conversely more shrill, these new works seek out a more direct index
between raw sentiment and its visual articulation.
Cast amid the thresholds of darkness, Nightsong muses upon the spiritual
panacea of the moonlight. Fox is clearly turned on by the newfound
promise of truth and revelation it purports, its suggestive resolve, its
guiding way. This interconnection between truth and light is synonymous
with Christian belief systems, but here its latency is explored within pagan
lunar mythologies. Possessing a curious interest in ancient pagan
ceremonies, these works attempt to convene such a ritual. Searching for
metaphysical revelation amidst echoes of light, these works suspend
disbelief as Fox wills himself to believe that truth or wisdom may be
divined from reflections on translucent or luminescent surfaces.
Through a diptych of video works, shot in Obrestad Harbor, Stavanger in
2010, and the Holy Island of Lindesfarne, Northumberland in 2009, we
seemingly observe just such a ritual: Fox scrying for answers in a magic
mirror. Looking for the elusive – gazing through the lens of a video camera
– the respective films follow an allegro of light as sequin-like forms dance
an entrechat across the black meniscus of each watery plane. Shot at night
within the sanctuary of the particular harbours, the manmade haven of the
breakwater offers a fragile, and cosseted stillness – a physical and literal
space for spiritual contemplation. Within this protective hallow, contained
within the sheltered enclave of the projection, is a wistful and beguiling
effervesce of light, a would-be moon-dance.
In pagan beliefs and mythology alike the moon is attributed with
omniscient powers – powers that are most intoxicating when the moon is
fully illuminated. This is when divination is supposed to be most potent.
But it is also when the moons darker associations come to the fore, its
connections with lunacy – moments of periodic insanity driven by the lunar
calendar. The moon is attributed thus with both the power to reveal, but
also the power to confound, to leave the stargazer moonstruck. Searching
for divine truths amidst this mortal coil there is a propensity to see what
we want to see: the film might be an earthly reflection of the moon on a
clear, cloudless night, the work may involve a search for wisdom, but
rather than mystical promise what we see is pure aesthetics.
Visually these baths of oscillating luminosity captivate, entrap and
hypnotize our gaze: they lure us in like a moth baited by the glow of an
electric light filament; we are a seafarer drawn to a beacon of light amid
the encircling darkness. It is does not matter that the moon trope is a
simulation, that the hallowed reflection has been cast by the iridescent
harbour lights. Moonlight is itself deceptive, not real, not in fact emitting
its own glow but reflecting that of the sun, and the full moon is the height
of this conceit. If wisdom is to be found in these videos, from these videos,
it does not come in the form of magical revelation. These videos are not
testaments to the paranormal, Fox is not revering the mystical occult, nor
are these videos simply platitudes to ancient myths. These works do
however capture the essence of the search for an affinity between the
mind and nature: the act of looking, to seek out truths – introspectively.
In both the videos what we witness is a process of bringing repressed
emotions fizzing to the shadowy surface. That they were made a year apart
is important. Time has both the ability to heal, but also to stand still.
Emotions transcend time and this work is about an enduring sense of
longing, facing up to very personal truths. In dissecting this raw emotion
Fox is not finding something new – not becoming wise to something that
can never be revealed or fully comprehended – but letting go of
something. The light here is a sign of release, an effusion – a metonym for
Fox purging himself in the darkness and perhaps in probing his spiritualself such, there is a measure of catharsis to be found here in 2011.
Wise at last, my eyes at last,
Are cutting you down to your size at last
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - no more.
[Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers]
Whilst the videos deal with metaphysical introspection, the second part of
Nightsong, Echo (2011), explores the physical instability that comes as a
result of rejection and loss. Reflecting upon the taunting presence of selfdoubt, Echo visualises this corporeal self-abasement. Self-consciously
situated in the modesty of near-darkness, this constellation of 29 varying
sized glass discs diffidently glows. Again they reference the moon –
spherical planes emitting a gleaming luster – but scribed upon they
glowing surfaces is not a pocked marked lunar surface, but a series of
delicate drawings of the artist’s body. These pallid studies reflect an
intimate process of self-examination. Though they do not posses the highly
charged eroticism or seduction of the figures camouflaged in the tondos
or lace-like skins of paint of the Phantasieblume series, they are not
altogether
objectified
and
un-suggestive.
The
individual
drawings
constrained within each disc focus a voyeuristic gaze on disparate, isolated
parts of the body. Collectively strewn across the floor they begin to form
the semblance of a figure, but as individual components, they manipulate
the scale and proportion of particular features heightening their allure: a
magnified and pursed pair of lips, a naval, a nipple, an eye and so forth.
The title of the work is moreover fundamental to its reading. Echo
references the speech-deprived nymph of Greek mythology, stricken such
that her only utterances were a repeat of those words last uttered by
others. In Ovid’s Romanised telling of this tale, the bittersweet, tragic
undoing of Echo is coupled with the telling of another heartrending story,
that of Narcissus. Collectively through this tale of unrequited desire and
love unfulfilled, both are undone:
Let Narcissus love and suffer
Let him, like us, love and know it is hopeless
And let him, Like Echo perish of anguish.
[Ted Hughes, ‘Echo and Narcissus’ in Tales from Ovid]
In Hughes’ retelling of Echo, he iterates, ‘But love was fixed in her body’.
Emotions fade, wilt like spring flowers, putting back all the strength they
have exhibited into the bulb from whence they came. Longing is made
plain – its being not simply that of an unworldly emotion, but a physical,
bodily one too. Love is to be found in the small of the back, the nape of
the neck and veiled beneath the skin. In Echo, Fox is not simply exposing
himself. Ill at ease, interrogating his bodily-consciousness, he is reflecting
on the heart-felt yearning with which the intimate extremities of his own
body are charged. The slightness of these drawings is not so much a
measure of meekness but reflects the fragility of the personal, but
otherwise
inaudible echoes of
desire. Their incarceration in
glass
furthermore reflects a reluctance to let go of these emotions – it intensifies
their essence. Making these emotions incarnate in these objects, they
become like love letters, echoes of past longing, leftovers to be cherished
and resolutely held onto, tapped into once more: exhibited.
The words seemed to ring back to me enriched from the vaults of my
dungeon. [Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited]
*
Both in terms of the exhibition’s title and its physical layout in the gallery
spaces there is a sense of clear segregation and division between the
bodies of work: Phantasieblume; Nachtlied. Sat amidst the existing and
newly composed works of the Phantasieblume series however there is one
other work that conceivably represents a segue between the two parts of
the exhibition. Murmuring (2011) is again a new work. Developed through
Fox’s recent residency with National Glass Centre, Sunderland, its principle
constituent is again a series of delicately crafted glass objects. Arranged in
a circular configuration on the floor, skirting around a pool of acrylic paint
– an oily stagnant pond, a murky puddle – their reflections are
intentionally cast and mirrored in its gleaming surface. Returning to the
story of Narcissus, it was in a ‘pool of perfect water’ in which he
encountered his reflected, yet unbeknown, self:
No Shepherd had ever driven sheep
To trample the margins. No Cattle
Had slobbered their muzzles in it
And Befouled it. No wild beast
Had ever dashed through it.
No Bird had ever paddled there preening and bathing
Only surrounding grasses drank its moisture
And though the arching tress kept it cool
No twigs rotted in it, and no leaves.
[Ted Hughes, ‘Echo and Narcissus’ in Tales from Ovid]
For Narcissus the pool was the instrumental means of his ruin: its innocent
purity masking its fateful role. In Murmuring the would-be pond is made
far more
malevolent, the contrary of Ovid’s un-spoilt pool. Having
rebuffed the attentions of Echo, Narcissus was punished for his arrogant,
undoubting, fulsome self-worth – condemned to fall in love with himself
through his own reflection. Ultimately consumed by his own love, Narcissus
perishes, leaving in his wake a flower: a narcissus, a daffodil perched at the
edge of the pond. In fox’s new installation, the glass forms take on the
semblance of an undergrowth of plant life. Though clearly abstract, their
colourful gaiety and organic structures evoke flowers, fungi and shrubbery.
In reference to the story of Narcissus this installation becomes a woodland
glade. Consumed by love and born out of the dust of desire, emotions of
loss are transformed into an ecology of flora. Immortalised in a strewn
spray of commemorative flowers, the literal fusing of the symbolic role of
botanical imagery to themes of desire, longing and loss are made most
manifestly evident.
Running throughout the Phantasieblume series there is an interest in
mythologies and folklore – their enduring, shifting representation. Linking
this to Fox’s interest with Victorian Floriography, the story of Narcissus has
also left its mark upon this clandestine, coded language for giving and
receiving flowers. Narcissus, the botanical name for the common or garden
Daffodil in its coded form translates as a symbol of regard. Narcissus, the
arrogant hunter who saw himself in such esteem, in death bore a flower
that too has come to represent, regard – albeit a more emotionally
restrained emblem of affection.
Whilst Fox employs a version or representation of the coded language of
flowers throughout this body of work, at no pint does he attempt to
provide a key to this cipher. The intended emotional and symbolic
meaning of a Passiflora – passion flower – a Lily, a Carnation or a Rose is
left unclear, we are left to muse upon their portended meanings. Taken out
of context, we know not what intent underpins their presentation nor the
circumstance in which the flowers fleeting message bore relevance. Scenes
of flesh, ambiguous sexual liaisons also veil implications unknown,
seemingly placed to confuse and confound the spectator – the voyeur.
Where as a certified language of flowers has been extrapolated from Kate
Greenaway’s book, The Language of Flowers, the scenes of sexual
encounter
are
much
more
subjective,
drawn
from
mass-produced
pornography and Fox’s own personal wank-bank. Combined together, the
seeming innocence of these floral communiqué, the conservative emblems
of prim and properness – the lace doily – and images of unabated lust and
illicit acts of desire make for an elusive narrative of meaning.
In two of the larger and more recent works of this series, Belladonna
(2010) and Come Undone (2011) the ambiguity and complex compositional
contradictions are pushed even further. Come Undone takes the form of
one of Fox’s signature cabinet pieces. Within the layering of the cabinet,
four cornerstones offer relatively constrained sexuality: four intimate
drawings of nipples float within areolas of root-form like decoration. For
the centerpiece however Fox has gone all out deconstructing the
regimented form of the lacework, redrawing it as a disarray of intricate
tendrils. As the delicate circular form dissipates toward its edges and the
circular configuration gives way to string-like tentacles, it begins to
resemble the amorphous structure of a jellyfish. Rather than being tipped
with poisonous toxins of a Sea Nettle Jellyfish, the tips of these dancing
fronds heighten their erotic charge, and at the nucleus of this cellular
structure, delicately observed figures are caught in an embrace, fuelling the
ambiguous sensual assault.
Belladona, on the other hand pushes the biographical significance within
the work. The skin coloured blanket of the painted film – the would be
canvas – is both a reference to the artists own body, but also a simulation
of the threadbare weave of a bed sheet, Fox’s tainted bed sheet. Like in
Echo, Fox has also literally drawn from his own body, and a similar
vocabulary of puckered lips, palms of hands, soles of feet and nipples
transform the painted skin into a form of shroud. Layered atop of these
bodily markings is a varying arrangement of images of flowers and plants,
their combination in all likelihood both horticulturally muddled and
symbolically contradictory. Finally, images of insects and carrion further
add to the mesmerizing array of multifarious juxtapositions. Given the
biographical reference points in this work, the visual disarray can only be
read as a complex reflection of emotional turmoil. Belladona is a vision at
the time of Fox’s personal dystopia.
Encircling the walls of the gallery are hung a series of dense circular
panels, tondos. These highly sexual, neoclassical images, these would be
romantic idylls have been labourously worked, resulting in highly polished
surfaces which capture in reflective form images of their surroundings. As
viewers we are drawn in, implicated in their narratives as either the passive
viewer or the active voyeur. In these final works, the complicit gaze, the
necessary and yet invasive act of looking prevalent throughout the
exhibition is made most clearly manifest. This is the epitome, this is the
mythology of Phantasieblume Nachtlied.
You are Me. Now I see that
I see through my own reflection.
But it is too late.
[Ted Hughes, ‘Echo and Narcissus’ in Tales from Ovid]