Stripping

Strip /  by Justin Harrison

This is gonna look like I’ve lost my mind….But then I guess when art is being it’s least performative - perhaps it’s being most honest and has greater potential for insight. Or to at least move towards something genuine.

There is simple pleasure for me in removing some of the bark, ‘stripping’ to raw wood. I’d like to do it almost surgically. However I also enjoy the rhythm of the cut marks across the surface. A rhythm that feels located in the familiar. I’d like to have multiples but worry about time and is it worth it for the work. Is this my work? I keep looking for clues from myself.

I’ve been listening to various of talks on Derrida, Mark Fisher, Marx, Julia Kristeava. Presence and performance and Image. . I don’t know that I can surmise it all just yet. But something akin to - Presence in crisis, the lack of location and reference - a digital malaise or palsy.

 

Cleansing /  by Justin Harrison

I had some time, so Iwent to the forest. I find it such a refreshing location to be in. Immersed in sea of tress and green. I find a place to be, to quiet myself.

I took my coffee pot - it’s a ritual. A place of prayer.

There is a clearing I favour, occupied by Oak and Holly. When I came upon it today it had litter and various bits of evidence human passage. It upset me, it felt very wrong. I cleared it as an act of cleansing and humility. Remembering that I make mess, literal and spiritual.

Some small works came…’little nothings’ - quick and unselfconscious. (More limited timed pieces). Playing with materials. Stripping. Stripping small branches of their bark The work seems overly simplistic, but then this is an exercise in me getting out of my own way, not censoring everything and realising what can come out of play. So much is serious and ‘oh so earnest’.

The drawing followed and I can’t decide which way it should go up, or where it should go. But I almost need to just get this stuff out of my head to make room for the following ideas. A cleansing. My head is full of stuff, it’s getting crowded.

Breathe.

I see the forest as a site of constant change and micro transformations. Growth and Decay. Transformation up and Transformation down.