Project Two: Barry Comer and Richard Guest

Untitled (Project Two), 2017 by Barry Comer and Richard Guest

This image has been cooking for a good long while; Barry and I initiated our second project in September 2015…and finally, here’s the result.

Our previous project started with an exchange of self-portraits, and through a game of exquisite corpse in which each of us added and subtracted elements, resulted in two distinct images. For project two, we decided to follow the same procedure, but make the end result one image. And kicked things off with a still life…

Here are some of the intermediate stages:

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This is a project by Barry Comer and Richard Guest.

Barry and I have never met in the physical world. He is based in Louisville, Kentucky and I live on the edge of London. I have long admired his drawings. So I jumped at the chance when Barry suggested we work together.

Barry Comer, 2015

Richard Guest, 2015

 

Recap: Between Scarlett and Guest: 11th September 2016 – 3rd February 2017

– Then and Now, 2016 –

On 20th December 2014, Ashley Lily Scarlett and I started a conversation in pictures called Between Scarlett and Guest. Ashley is based in Sydney, Australia and I’m in Beckenham, UK – we have never met. But we trade pictures on an a sometimes daily basis.

Below is my side of the conversation from 11th September 2016 to 3rd February 2017. It incorporates archive images and those taken specifically in response to one of Ashley’s shots.

You can start “reading” Between Scarlett and Guest from any point (and read backwards or forwards) and it should still make some kind of sense.

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David Cook and I are reviewing each other’s record collections one disc at a time on a new blog called Zzzounds! David has just reviewed The Seer by Swans. Check it out!

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ID III

Here is an extract from the third part of my conversation with David Cook about Mark Wallinger. Please click on the link below to read the full text…

Mark Wallinger’s ID – A Conversation (Part Three).

Jun21 by londoneyeball

On May 1st, Richard Guest & I visited Mark Wallinger’s show  ID  at Hauser & Wirth London W1. Afterwards, we discussed the show by email. The following is the result of several weeks’ electronic toing and froing. You can read part Two here:

Mark Wallinger’s Ego

…David: In the way you describe it, Ego comes across as a possibly disingenuous but certainly disarming glimpse behind the scenes at the moment of artistic creation in 2016. I like to think the ink under his fingernails is from the Id paintings, and Ego represents a kind of dumb show which shows the conscious perception of the creative moment in the mind of the artist in all its glory and shoddiness. Maybe it started as a sarcastic gesture of either satisfaction or dissatisfaction. I can see that it is in a way describing the meeting of our modern selves and our cultural past, but can it simultaneously subvert and promote the creative act? Wallinger seems to be saying this is nothing, but is also everything…can we absorb that paradox?

Click here to read on…

Mark Wallinger’s ID – A Conversation (Part One).

David Cook and I have been to another show. Please click through to read the full conversation.

London Eyeball

On May 1st, Richard Guest & I visited Mark Wallinger’s show  ID  at Hauser & Wirth London W1. Afterwards, we discussed the show by email. The following is the result of several weeks’ electronic toing and froing.

Wallinger’s Superego 2016 Stainless steel, glass mirror, motor 350 x 160 x 160 cm  Photo: Alex Delfanne

David: Firstly let me confess that I don’t know much about Mark Wallinger or his work apart from the copies of the Stubbs horse paintings which I prefer to the originals but consider pretty pointless. What (unusually) made me want to see this show were some reviews of it that I saw. I didn’t read them too closely but the fact they reached me in my bunker caused me to think that Hauser and Wirth are trying to reshape the critical landscape that art inhabits in a way that hasn’t been done (in London at least)…

View original post 1,201 more words

An anniversary

– BSAG #293, 2015 –

The 20th December marks Between Scarlett and Guest’s one year anniversary. BSAG is the blog I share with Ashley Lily Scarlett. It’s a conversation in images* – a game of visual consequences in a way. And a lot of fun (for me). Ashley’s a great collaborator – we give each other a lot of freedom – and her beautiful work’s a daily visual spur. Thanks very much, Ashley! Here’s to another year!

*the conversation can be “read” in any order and from any point – come and check it out.

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Dick Titch #1 and Recap

– Dick Titch #1 (Afternoon), 2015 –

A very helpful sign has popped up outside Charing Cross station. It offers advice on a wide range of subjects, and I’ve pictured it here. Here are some of the other helpful things it says: “Don’t drink too much, know your limit and stop,” “Only take what you need,” and “Phone your mum.” Nikki made the last one up, but you get the idea. London, 2015.

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On 20th December 2014, Ashley Lily Scarlett and I started a conversation in pictures called Between Scarlett and Guest. Ashley is based in Sydney, Australia and I’m in Beckenham, UK – we have never met (although we nearly did once). We trade pictures on an almost daily basis. Dick Titch #1 has not appeared in BSAG yet, (but the Afternoon half has). Below is my side of the conversation from 18th November to 1st December 2015. It incorporates archive images and those taken specifically in answer to one of Ashley’s shots.

You can start “reading” Between Scarlett and Guest from any point (and read backwards or forwards) and it should still make some kind of sense.

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Collaboration #1: Richard Guest and Dan Parnell: FIN

The Set-up

Untitled, 2015
Dan Parnell
Acrylic on Canvas Board

 

Untitled, 2015
Dan Parnell
Acrylic on Canvas Board

 

L-R: Fake Blues, 2014; Blinding Light of Heaven, 2014; The Heart Knows Better, 2014
Richard Guest
Digital Photography

 

In mid-July 2015, Dan Parnell and I exchanged the above works and challenged each other to change them, to turn them into something new. There were no rules as to how we would do this.

The process

Here’s a list of associations I made on first seeing Dan’s paintings: monochromatic, artist’s marks, suggestions of figure and landscape, monumentalism, rigidity, permanence, stone, carbon, earth tremors, St. Ives (Hepworth, Nicholson, Lanyon) and daylight on the coast. I think they also got slightly confused in my mind with a recent family trip to Rye and Hastings…the sum total of which meant something maritime was in the offing.

After photographing Dan’s paintings in the back garden, I worked on them in my usual way in Photoshop. So the physical paintings never changed (they are rather beautiful things and I’m glad they’re still around).

My current working method is to overload the picture plain with outside elements found and photographed in the street, (here: discarded carrier bags, spilt milk, cellophane wrapping, foil, paper takeaway bags, graffiti, scraped paintwork on the side of a van, cardboard packaging and a paper plate) and then gradually rearrange, delete and transform them until a new image forms.

To stop myself worrying about ruining Dan’s compositions, I added a layer of spilt milk to each of them, and ruined them. After that I felt much freer to add and subtract elements until the music started to play. I stopped once I felt I’d achieved a nice tension between the original image and the manipulations I’d made in response.

Here are a few shots of the intermediate stages of When The Boat Comes In I:

and II:

The final images are named after a popular BBC television series from the late 1970s. You can hear a glorious version of the theme song sung by Alex Glasgow here.

Reactions to Dan’s painting:

Bearing in mind we didn’t know what the other was doing there are a lot of parallels between Dan’s work and my own. The most obvious one is the maritime theme. Then there is the shared palette and the echoed shapes (the dinghy is very similar to the shape of the central bag in WTBCI I)…all very hive mind and a bit odd. Because I’m so familiar with the three images I gave Dan it was an odd sensation knowing that they lurked just below the surface – their meanings subsumed in his overall pattern.

I love the upbeat, anarchic image Dan has come up with – it’s a fascinating composition full of hot depths. And there has obviously been a violent struggle with the material – the imagery and colour remind me of Apocalypse Now. His paint marks and chemical attacks have smashed through the photographic images, lending them texture – simultaneously slowing them down and speeding them up. I liked the trace of his hand – lines I could never make, gestures I wouldn’t think of performing.

The use of (what I assume is), found imagery is interesting – it’s something I wouldn’t do at the moment. I used to do it a lot and this reminded me of the way it can open up an image to new associations. A nice bit of grit.

Final images

Launch time, 2015
Parnell/ Guest
Acrylic and bleach on photographic prints

 

When The Boat Comes In (I), 2015
Guest/ Parnell
Acrylic on Canvas Board, Photography, Digital Manipulation

When The Boat Comes In (II), 2015
Guest/ Parnell
Acrylic on Canvas Board, Photography, Digital Manipulation

FIN

Recap: Between Scarlett and Guest: 27th August to 19th September

– After The Flood, 2015 –

On 20th December 2014, Ashley Lily Scarlett and I started a conversation in pictures called Between Scarlett and Guest. Ashley is based in Sydney, Australia and I’m in Beckenham, UK – we have never met (although we nearly did once). But we trade pictures on an almost dailyy basis. After The Flood has not appeared in BSAG yet, (but it’s only a matter of time). Below is my side of the conversation from 27th August to 19th September 2015. It incorporates archive images and those taken specifically in answer to one of Ashley’s shots.

You can start “reading” Between Scarlett and Guest from any point (and read backwards or forwards) and it should still make some kind of sense.

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After The Flood is the sixth and final track on Van der Graaf Generator’s 1970 album, The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other. You can listen to it here.

Project One: Barry Comer and Richard Guest

Barry Comer, 2015

Richard Guest, 2015

This is a project by Barry Comer and Richard Guest.

Barry and I have never met in the physical world. He is based in Louisville, Kentucky and I live on the edge of London. I have long admired his drawings. So I jumped at the chance when Barry suggested we work together.

At the top of this post you can see Barry by Barry and Richard by Richard. Having agreed to work on each other’s images in a game of consequences/ exquisite corpse kind of way, we swapped self-portraits.

The idea was to pass the images back and forth a set number of times, each adding to (or subtracting from) both portraits, and responding to the other’s changes. In my case, I had a hidden agenda and sought:

(a) to bring out my idea of who Barry is (based on his blog and my knowledge of him from emails etc), in the picture and make him central to it.

(b) to make myself disappear.

Here are the in-between stages in sequence:

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And here are the final images:

Barry Comer, 2015

Richard Guest, 2015

Creative Thresholds

Ashley and I are very proud to announce that Between Scarlett and Guest, our conversation in pictures, is featured in the latest issue of Creative Thresholds. Thanks very much to Melissa for inviting us and making the post look wonderful.