portal for creative expression
The British pavilion, which had a long queue last week, is quiet today so I walk straight in. The artist chosen by the British Council to officially represent Great Britain is Cathy Wilkes, an artist from Northern Ireland who lives in Glasgow. It is an exhibition that requires quiet contemplation, reflection and is subtly poetic – probably not to everybody’s taste.
This show brings together spiritually nomadic sex-positive radicals working in the mediums of fabric, installation, herbalism, healing, new media, glitch, sound and ritual performance.
As agreed, we perform for one hour in order to enter a meditative zone. I wear a blindfold to help focus on the soundscape and movements and I work on paintings which are on the pavement and also hung along the wall opposite the gallery, where Paul is set up on a table with his equipment.
The karmic destiny indicates that the feminine needs to be acknowledged and established as a vital source of wisdom in our societal discourse. Inherently, the Cosmos tells us we need to tune to the planetary awareness of the Great Mother Earth, and the womanly nurturing, compassion and creative juno (juno is the feminine version of the Roman genius).
Although it took Paul Morgan a great deal of time to assemble, the synth is built for an improvised performance with very little post-production, he will conjure a soundscape in conversation with my live-drawing performance, essentially using me as a proxy painter to draw the sounds.
Gestural choreography accompanies the custom tall dress that Iris is wearing as the artist becomes a totemic transmitter of her own mystic fascination for animals and the unabashed beauty of nature.
There is no indication who the sign is directed towards but I wonder whether it might be collected to John Pilger’s recent article titled The War on Venezuela is Built on Lies (Feb 21, 2019) or the same line of thought. This year’s Venezuela Pavilion is organized by curator Oscar Sotillo, the founder of left-wing cultural journal La Mancha.
Our world will always need stories, beauty, vulnerability, compassion, and nuance. Poetry can offer all of these things. In doing so, poetry helps us find meaning, tenderness, and power.