(More of) The Compulsive Quest

The Compulsive Quest continued

The Compulsive Quest, 2012. 

98 postcards, carpet, plastic pots, soil, 6 Buxus sempervirens

Idiot Joy Showland at Philadelphia Street, Bristol, 18th - 24th June 2012

The Compulsive Quest

My piece for Idiot Joy Showland focusses on this photograph of a Leylandii  hedge in Knowle, Bristol.

Compress the shrubs, absolute, free from imperfections, geometric forms, orders, rules and regulations.

Barriers, screens, nature, manmade, angles, lines, arches and pyramids. Ordered shadows. Privacy.

Society seeking a form, straight lines and curves. Deviating from nature, shaping and re-defining.

"In a chaos of shifting impressions, each of us constructs

a stable world in which objects have recognisable shapes, 

are located in depth, and have permanence."

(Mary Douglas, 1966)

Grand formality, retreat from strife, precision. Maintaining 'curious greens.'

"Our British gardeners...instead of humouring nature, love

 to deviate from it as much as possible. Our trees rise in 

cones, globes and pyramids. We see the mark of the

scissors on every plant and bush. I do not know whether

 I am singular in my opinion, but for my own part, I

would rather look upon a tree in all its abundance and

diffusions of boughs and branches, than when it is cut and 

trimmed into a mathematical figure."

(Joseph Addison, 1712)

Shifting ratios - absolute or relative,                                    Problem solving in a complex world.
                         universal or particular
                         certainty or doubt


Kaleidoscopic - changeable, fluctuating, fluid, complex and confused.

"Without order, planning, predictability, central control...
obedience, discipline - without these nothing fruitful can
happen, because everything disintegrates. And yet - without
the magnanimity of disorder, the happy abandon, the
entrepreneurship venturing into the unknown...the creative
imagination rushing in where bureaucratic angels fear to
tread - without this, life is a mockery and a disgrace.'
(E.F Schumacher, 1973)

"There is no other way forward but consciously to act as nature acts, consciously ordering things in a way that allows individuality to unfold, while this unfolding also serves the life of the whole. This whole is the form of our life."
(Hugo Haring, 1925)

Idiot Joy Showland

Idiot Joy Showland - a group exhibition of 9 artists (Zanne Andrea, Helen Grant, Kate Griffiths, Pat Macrae, Marianne Ryan, Vicky Takooree, Linda Taylor, Sheila Yeger and me, Polly Kelsall)

Runs from Monday 18th June until Sunday 24th June 2012 (open view Weds, 20th June 6 - 9pm)

At Philadelphia Street Gallery, 6 Philadelphia St, Cabot Circus (opposite Harvey Nics).

Ideas surrounding Idiot Joy Showland are absurdity, illusion and longing