Ineffably Perceived
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR BROTHER!
Yesterday it was my brother's 39th birthday. The most significant birthday present I gave John was a DVD of the very first film he ever recalls seeing, a Walt Disney film called "One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing". I think it’s quite remarkable that he remembers seeing this film at the tender age of two years!
The film is completely ridiculous in the nicest possible way and it's full of familiar faces from British film and television of times gone by, including: the loveable Bernard Bresslaw and Joan Sims (of the Carry On films), Peter Ustinov, Helen Hayes, Jon Pertwee and Joan Hickson.
John was really delighted to see the film again, and I have to say I liked the film too.
ART
The PM Gallery in Ealing is currently hosting two exhibitions with an urban feel. Despite being a born and bred Londoner, I certainly could not call myself a fan of city life, so I didn’t really expect to like the exhibitions, but I did!
I was most interested in some of the paintings by Marguerite Horner, as they are more about moods and feelings than an external reflection of urban living, the paintings called “Lost” (one of the only non-city images) and “Help” are especially introspective. The later consists of a blurred image which looks just like an agoraphobic panic attack in oils. There is a sense of isolation and displacement in some of her works which is quite fascinating, and in a way her paintings reflect my own negative view of the concrete jungle experience.
I’d be simply distraught if I had to live on a housing estate in Tower Hamlet’s or somewhere equally as built up. I think such places rob people of their hope and eventually their humanity (if not that, their sanity!), because people mimic the environment they see: if their environment is disordered and lacks structure, so will the people themselves. I think it is so important to provide the poorest in society with the most decent housing possible, to help them get on their feet. I'm not talking about luxury apartments, I’m talking about not having people crammed together in ugly filthy tower blocks with nothing to inspire them (this really has to change!). Humans like to think of themselves as somehow separate from the animals, but we are not, not really. We need the stabilising force of nature, if not some other kind of beauty, and we need lives which have function and meaning. So, as well as a visually pleasing environment to promote stability and security, people need to have a sense of personal responsibility and discipline instilled into them (something the government is currently trying to enforce with their back to work program here in the UK); otherwise people never break the cycle of crime, desperation and poverty. We cannot blame or look down upon people who haven't been provided with the tools to change or a vision of self-actualization. But, I digress....
The best paintings of Marguerite Horner’s in the exhibition were: “Immutable Light”, "Walled in by Feelings" and “Ineffably Perceived”. These larger paintings had a different feel to many of the other works; to me they reflected thoughts by night, a passage of time where even in an urban environment thoughts come to linger and contemplation is possible. If I had £1,400 to burn, I would buy “Ineffably Perceived” for its asking price.