Bob's your artist for brexit blues

82 x 56 inches. Oil pastel, pencil. 2017.

Poem to a drawing

​Are we walking down a corridor in the National Portrait gallery? 
Walls lined with the great and good who have killed and conquered.
This is all rather tiring and I am looking for somewhere to sit.   

Commotion in a room ahead, left or right? 
A gust of wind blows us into the Euro wing. 
We see a mother and child with candle and umbrella.  
A man checks his flies are zipped. 
Above his head, a tricolour ink roller in suspended animation.
On the ground, footprints of Prussian blue.  
Centre stage, chaise lounge.
What is going on? Can we sit here?
Maybe in the next room, next to a woman and her copy of J. G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition. 
In front of a painting of the British Prime Minister getting fruity with the American President. 

Hold on!
Is that Robert Rauschenberg trapped in twine from a plumb bob?
He appears to be pointing  backwards and forward, one hand to 1974, the other, 2019.
Can we trust an artist to TELL US EVERYTHING about this space within space
That has spilled out from a box labelled Highland Shortbread?
​
Where can I sit? 
My legs are killing me. 

Notes to myself

This was sketched immediately after visiting the excellent Robert Rauschenberg exhibition at Tate Modern and during the United Kingdom government's formal notification of withdrawal from the European Union. This was also the week when The Daily Mail newspaper on March 28th featured a photo of Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon with the trivialising head line: “Never mind Brexit, who won Legs-it!”. On the same day, a new 12-sided £1 coin became legal tender across the UK. 

Pondering all these matters, I started to sketch a scene using Robert Rauschenberg as an enigmatic muse. His free and easy approach to materials, for example, building an umbrella or fan into a painted surface, had me thinking about how to use everyday objects as part of my art practice. I turned to a biscuit tin in my studio. I don't know why I started to collect objects in a biscuit tin or how long they have accumulated (more than a decade now), but this box with random objects ranging from coins, fuses, tea coaster, plumb bob, pencil emblazoned with "Tell me everything," was raided for inspiration and incorporated into the drawing. This was my equivalent to Rauschenberg's "combine" although I have made no concession to three dimensionality. There is added irony in that the box has a culinary connection with Scotland; a nation destined to have a falling out with the English over the issue of falling out of Europe. All these objects and related ideas came tumbling out of the box and into the composition. 

Some other allusions for the cultural critic to register:

• The portraits within this drawing, namely those which are hanging up in the gallery space, represent scenes from British and European history in which warfare is the guiding principle for dead white males.
• The concussive blows experienced in battle, leading to the common perception of "seeing stars" has developed into the EU flag with 12 gold stars on a blue background, signifying peace and unity.
• Prussian Blue is a dark blue paint pigment manufactured by a company called Win & New. There is a serious spillage of Prussian blue in the gallery. 
• The portrait in the gallery that leads off from the main room, contains a caricatured May and Trump and building on their "special relationship" with hints of BDSM.
• Ballard's collection of linked stories, The Atrocity Exhibition, published in 1970, contains all manner of radical psycho-sexual, cross cultural and political collisions which chime with the tone of this drawing.
• I toyed with the idea of having the woman reading this book played by the actress Angie Dickinson, in a reworking of the gallery scene from the 1980 film, Dressed to Kill. If this drawing could have an extended tracking shot, we might follow her and the man standing in front of the chaise lounge. 
• The artist cannot of course "Tell us everything" and this image, while loaded with my own pre-meditated history, is open to and invites further readings.