Every living person has to confront the inevitability of their own death and those of others close to them. Art and artists have always engaged with the subject of mortality as a means to giving expression to the feelings and fears aroused by thoughts of the end of life. The very fact of death and the transience of mortal existence is the most powerful spiritual signifier and accounts for the need to find meaning and transcendence. Death could be feared and also longed for, a release from the earthly struggles and torments. In the sequences portraying the Dance of Death by Lubeck and Holbein in the sixteenth century, Death was portrayed as the great leveler of earthly inequalities and injustices and also an escape mechanism to the promised heavens. In our modern day society death is something to be avoided, it is rare to come into contact with it and equally rare to see depictions. This was clearly not the case in the Middle Ages and is also not the case in Eastern traditions, such as the monastic practice Asubha bhavana, where monks contemplate the bodies of the dead. The aim being in Eckhart Tolle’s words “Die before you die and find that there is no death”
Eschatology is a branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind, or the ultimate destiny of humankind. The plural version of the word is used in the title to give a sense of a continuing and multiple narrative. The expanding anxieties of the present encouraged by an incessant media relaying images of enormous fires consuming forests, floods, voracious swarms of locusts, all of which equate with the Biblical narratives of war, famine, pestilence, fire and flood. It has almost been as if humanity, with its’ ever increasing levels of anxiety somehow sensed the impending pandemic. This body of work re contextualizes past illustrations of history with present day imagery, bringing the sense that history is a cyclical phenomenon. For example there are the parallels between the present day and the Weimar period in Germany, The Spanish flue epidemic of 1918 and the repeated financial crashes each century typically due to fraud and speculation. Civilization and humanity continuously evolves but still has to contend with the same unseen and underlying forces of nature
This body of work collapses the time line of history, combining Durer’s illustrations from 1498 of St. John’s book of revelations with images of contemporary landscape. The apocalyptic narrative of the New Testament and the medieval vision of it are combined into the present. In her book “Doomsday Dreams”, Eleanor Heartney says “ Every age finds it’s own apocalypse as the eschatological narrative is recast to address contemporary conditions” The works in this exhibit explore the notion of the apocalypse from the perspective of the personal in “Death in Venice” or from the perspective of climate destruction in “The Fall of Stars” Economic collapse and financial catastrophe are viewed in ironic contexts in “The Whore of Babylon” “ A Visitation” and “Markets Routed” . The wider notion of the Apocalypse is explored in “After Life” and “The Four Riders of the Apocalpyse, Berlin 1945” The destructive and apocalyptic results of Colonial history are also explored in the works “The Aguirre Wrath of God” “After Life’ and “The City of London and the Dance of Death” The effects of plague and disease are referenced in “Nosferatu” and also “Death in Venice”
“The Four riders of the Apocalypse, Berlin 1945” is the third in a series that focus upon Twentieth century Berlin. Durer’s depiction of the four riders of the Apocalypse is set above the ruins of Berlin and brings the medieval depictions of Biblical prophesy to the reality of the destruction of a civilization. The Nazi Parties’ own Eschatological fantasies ended up consuming themselves and many millions of others. The sculpture “The Ring” combines Durer’s images of “The Battle of the Angels” with that of “The ride of The Valkyries” and the destruction of Dresden. Of course from the ashes and ruins the new arose and modern Germany is an example of a nation and culture that exhibits impressive evolution from the former incarnation.
My art is inherently political in that it aims to present in visual form the hidden truths of history. Truths that have often been hidden on purpose by the perpetrators from their own people. What is taught of as truth in one country is known to be lies from the perspective of another. A powerful need for secrecy and a desire to maintain a mythological national narrative and identity prevail.