The Self-Isolation Residency 28th may 2020: Day 60

Exploring Installation No. 8.2: 'Composition in White (Painting)',
501 Artist Residency, China 2011, Antony Clarkson

So last night I began to talk about my first installation piece in China, 'Composition in White (Painting)' particularly in regards to its name and in reference to painting. Tonight I would like to expand on those thoughts to perhaps use this piece to think a little more about painting in general. The thing that I would like to state before I go any further is that painting is not an image, or at least it doesn't have to be one. A painting is a surface onto which 'paint' has been applied to create an illusion. It does not technically have to be an illusion that has 'depth', although it almost always is. So are there any other factors that define whether an 'object is a painting or not?

If you ask a million painters that question you will probably get a million different answers and they all will relate to that painters usage of the medium. To me part of this definition of a painting relates very heavily to the materials involved, their usage and their interaction. Of course the materials involved in making a painting also vary widely from painter to painter and also from era to era; go back a couple of hundred years and most paintings would be done on wooden panels, go back even further and the paint would be applied to wet plaster. But I am, on the whole what might be though of as a modern/traditional oil painter in that I apply oil paint with brushes and knives onto a canvas with is kept in tension on a wooden stretcher. This narrative is therefore a big part of how I define a painting, so lets go through that story again and see how it possibly relates to both 'Composition in White (Painting)' but also to another piece of my installation work that I've mentioned previously; 'Tension'.

Our story of a painting therefore begins with a stretcher, for me this is usually made of wood but not always. All the stretcher really is is a means by which a flexible canvas can be made, for want of a better word, rigid. For most paintings this is usually a rectangular wooden form that the canvas is tacked, or more commonly these days stapled, to. So where are the the stretchers in 'Composition in White (Painting)' and in 'Tension'? Well they are there but in both of these cases there are only two stretcher bars attached to the canvas because the 'situation specific' nature of the space that is part of each of these installations  acts as the third and forth sides. Look again at the photo above, the canvas, and it is a form of canvas in this case, is attached to a wooden baton which I fixed to the top lintel of each of the 6 windows in the space, the other end of each canvas was then attached to another wooden baton which was then used to 'stretch' canvas across the space to a predetermined line on the floor where it was again fixed, As I say the third and forth sides of the stretchers are present in that they are formed by the structure of the gallery and are common to each 'painting'.

Although at first glance 'Tension' (below) may not seem to have anything in common with a painting I'm sure that by now the family resemblance is starting to become clear. In this case I did not need to add any stretchers to the space, they were already present in the form of the architectural columns which run down either side of the space. In this case all I had to be was stretch the canvas...the cling film.