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The Artist’s studio
Artists’ studios are strangely revealing spaces. Perhaps it is because it is the first impression of the artist’s working mind. Some give little away—the faintly discernable trace of another person’s physical passing—whist others are a virtual immersion into another person’s mind. Richard Lewer’s space is a veritable Aladdin’s cave, a cornucopia of text and paintings, enamel paint pots and the all pervading smell of turps and gloss paint. Black paint on white walls, words and phrases are painted across every clear surface, forming a visual diary of thoughts, overheard comments, and every-day sayings. ‘There’s no place like home’ jostles with the blacker ‘Stranger danger’ and ‘she’s a mole’. These fragments overlap, supersede, and jostle for prominence. Lewer talks about how he can only really start making work once the room has been de-neutrified, or personalised in this very particular way, and he seems to initiate every space he inhabits like this. Images of a recent 2008 residency at the McCahon studio in Titirangi, New Zealand, show a similarly treated wall surface. The once pristine studio is covered in fragments of text, with paintings hung over the various phrases. The texts appear as a cacophony of internal voices as well as an open-ended collection of phrases and words specific to a particular time or body of work: a reflection of the fragility of our inner minds and consciousness, or a whimsical documentation of our everyday, with all its failings, hopelessness, striving and humour?
This sporting life
Having survived as a child the ennui of the slow red ball across a television screen of constant green, I confess to some disquiet before meeting Lewer, given his self-confessed obsession... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline