Bournemouth, England, 1963. Studied at Central School of Art and Design, London. Lived in Venezuela from 1981-2016. Currently resides in MI, USA.
Artist of English origin who came to Venezuela looking for light at 18, and ended up living for two decades in Puerto Ordaz (an industrial city on the confluence of the Orinoco and Caroni rivers with the brightest light on earth) and consequently developed a body of work based on this monumental industrial park and the ever growing city.
Through constant repetition, the originally very figurative images were synthesized into an alphabet of symbols derived from elements and structures in the surroundings with which to subsequently rewrite the landscape. Through this abstract language I could finally embrace a revision of the female figure, and in increasingly narrative work, explore the broken balance of ecology in the masculine world of manufacturing.
After moving to Caracas in 2000 social art projects became an ever increasing counterpart to painting especially after a commission to draw the construction of a cablecar in the San Agustín del Sur hillside barrio. Since 2015 coordinates MAPEA, a group of activists, actors and architects drawn together to carry out workshops that include walkabouts, corporal expression and painting in an attempt to look at the city, it’s patterns and our evolving relationship with the urban environment.
The second showing of my exhibition Mangled Hopes for Bridges continues a process begun through the Destination Venezuela event with the Vicksburg Cultural Arts Center last year (see previous posts) and was now on show for Hispanic Heritage month at the KVCC Arcus Gallery and Center for New Media. I could not have asked for a more suitable showcase in Kalamazoo for my paintings and a chance to discuss the issues in the accompanying webinar (links below).
In the quiet of the pandemic there had been a change in focus, a shift in gaze from landscape and built environment to the people who were now absent from it at least around me. But the steady pedestrian stream over the border from Venezuela to Columbia as documented in Tulio Hernandez journalistic work did not diminish, on the contrary becoming ever more urgent as the pandemic worsened in Venezuela, never leaving my minds eye. As the English art historian Griselda Pollock articulated so perfectly in a podcast I heard while at work, most artists don’t usually know exactly what they want to say, it’s more of a compulsion that moves you to explore a theme visually.
Relocated to Kalamazoo, Michigan since 2016, last year I finally found the collaborators and organisations to work with on a new MAPEA mapping project. Getting to know a community always takes time.
I had just begun to organise a series of workshops for the summer camps held by the Parks and Recreation Department of the City Council when the pandemic hit.
Simultaneously we had been organising another event which had to be postponed straight away (with an exhibition hung and ready to inaugurate) but throughout the year we insisted on looking for ways to continue with our projects.
The MAPEA workshops in particular suddenly seemed all the more urgent exactly because they entail outdoor activities for children who were now forced to stay indoors.
But it did necessitate some adaptation and a lot of uncertainty up until the last minute, so the first expeditions were to take a very long hard look at spaces available and how we could use them, as well as being a great excuse to go out for a bike ride, which became a pandemic favourite for many. The first and nearest site to where I lived was the Upjohn Park, neighbouring Food innovation Center and Parks and Rec Youth Development Center.
Vicksburg Cultural Arts Centre, September/October 2020
How the arts thrive and flourish in spite of the pandemic and many uphill circumstances
Mangled hopes for bridges is the name of my exhibition and the painting above. They came in response to the reporting we were translating for our Destination Venezuela event that we’d been working on since the end of last year. Specifically from the work of Tulio Hernández in the Centre for the Memory of the Venezuelan Migration, an initiative he established in Bogota when he had to flee the country a few years ago. We left not long after, glad to have visas and jobs, but the recent migration over the last couple of years has been on foot giving rise to the most surreal and painful images especially across the long border shared with Colombia.
With the onset of the pandemic and ensuing quarantine the event had to be postponed at the last minute even though the exhibition was already up but we were glad to finally open a reformulated version in September, a brief respite in the uncertainty of the pandemic but all the more appreciated for that.
Natalya Critchley 