DEEP WATERS - REVISION OF MY LATEST COLLAGE

Vivi-Mari Carpelan: "Deep Waters", 65x50 cm, copyright 2012

I decided to redo my latest collage from scratch. There were too many flaws in the first version that were hard to live with, I discussed it with Martin and simply had to concede that I could do better. I have said before that there is often a problem when a piece is conceived over a longer period of time and when it's fairly large, because it tends to be more tentative and less focused. What happened here was that some of the ideas just weren't as crisp as they could be. For instance, it made sense to try and keep all the other elements except the most semantically pertinent ones black and white. Thus the bottles all stand out a lot more. The bow in the child's hair is also in colour... as a last minute decision I decided to put it there as a more pertinent pointer to the contents of this piece.

The background is made up of many different found images of landscapes, but I took more care this time in making sure that there aren't too many seams that stand out. The idea of an explosion in the background became more obvious as I worked harder on printing out different size bottles and concentrating them visually. 

In this piece, I am talking about my own mother and her past issues with alcohol abuse as well as the effect it has had on my own life. Surviving and fighting the effects of neglect and stress during ones childhood is like fighting a windmill. There is also the fear of drowning in emotional residue and having to make constant efforts to cope. The signs so typical of British "health and safety" are ironic reminders of a society that pretends to care about its disadvantaged members. However, as usual it's possible for the viewer to see whatever they like to see in this image. 


My mother was evacuated from her home during WWII and put in foster care at the age of four. She had to revise her own identity and become part of a culture that was diametrically opposite her own. Something that sticks out from her vivid stories is how much she hated having a bow stuck in her hair. Her new mother was a prima ballerina and aristocrat.

I have been soul searching a lot, trying to decide whether talking about a dysfunctional childhood is a valid thing to do. Shouldn't I just get on with life and put all that behind me? Well, for one thing I have to try and just do whatever comes to me as a subject matter. There is no other way of being honest. The other thing is, I'm not really digging through past issues in a therapeutic kind of way. I simply wish to bring this subject matter to other people's attention by creating a visual representation of it. I want to communicate something that I'm familiar with. In this way I hope that my piece has more validity as art rather than as a therapeutic gesture. If anything, it could be therapeutic for other people to see such an image?

I struggled to finish this piece in time for the deadline of the Saatchi showdown for surreal art - I might as well participate. For this reason I had to try and get a good shot of the piece, which proved very hard.  The muscles in my back are aching so badly from leaning over, trying to retouch areas where the varnish caused milkiness... My art is not really surreal but it's the category they offer that comes the closest. I wish symbolic art would also be seen as a valid category. After all, it's a lot more meaningful than surreal art, that tends to be rather whimsical and nonsensical. I really hope this piece has got what it takes to make it to this year's open exhibition in the MOMA in Machyntlleth. This year's theme is "movement". Yes, it's related to the Olympics but there is no need to stick to sports and the like. The idea of fighting a windmill came to me already last autumn. I actually don't like modern windmills much, as they are ugly bits of engineering that clutter the landscape. Meanwhile they are supposed to be a "good thing". There's a paradox if ever there was one....