STUART BRISLEY,  The Missing Text, Interregnum 3 (6 May-12 May 2010), 2013

Amdy Keate

The Missing Text, Interregnum 3 (6 May-12 May 2010), 2013

Oil on linen

135cm x 196cm

 

The Missing Text,
Interregnum 3 (6 May-12 May 2010)

The third painting is based on a single photograph selected as an antithesis to the characteristics of paintings 1&2.ʉ۬This photograph reveals reflections on the right side of the image which break the internal confinement of the heap and fractures the unified surface of the image. The street breaks through the surface and confirms the liquidity of the moment and the transitional nature of the 10 day action.

Note: Elephant in the room “...References to Caspar David Friedrich, Delacroix and Gericault appeared on texts in the gallery, as did references to the economy, democracy and the monarch. In the gallery space Brisley’s portrait of Prince Charles (Seeing Red, 1995) was hung – in the space next door his portrait of the Queen (Monarch at Bay, 1995) leant informally against the wall as a symbol whose power is in question.” from Peer press release.

... Time passes, autumn comes before winter, summer precedes autumn, spring comes before summer and before that the first winter when it all began. Next door the shutters were down, the doors were locked, the windows were boarded up. Nobody has been there for months on end ... progress continues at a snail’s pace... It leaves a trace of slime marking its path and there it all is, the letters and emails and the memories of phone calls and mushrooming conversations where the word hopefully recurs, rings out as a sad punctuation among the exhortations, the pleading and the official explanations of procedures ... There is the ironic recollection of letters and emails recording the euphoria when it was first agreed that a lease could be forthcoming that first winter ... To replicate, to double the available space this side of the wall with an exact mirroring of the space that side of the wall with the acquisition of an architectural doppelganger. The prospect of doubling up gave a sense of impending achievement ... However a new problem has arisen, it appears that the keys have been misplaced. Where are they? Somewhere in the Department of Small and Missing Items of course, where else? However, a person from a Department of something somewhere has promised to come with or without keys...

Excerpts from the preparatory notes for Next Door (the missing subject), 2010.