For this critique, I provided four images of 2-D works and a DVD of my most recent film piece. I think I knew that the piece that I really want to show was the film (working title ‘Stuck’ or ‘Stuck Mutant’. I had shown this to a number of friends and for the most part, they were all shocked by it. I made the piece as an exercise in trying to make a stop frame animation film, using a sequence of photographs taken with a still camera. I found the image sequence interesting, I had used an actor friend as the model which I lit and provided with a prop – a found object – that I came across while out walking, I brought it home and reflected on it for a number of months both indoors and out, before I decided how I wanted to use it. It was, four large fir cones, with a 10 to 12 inch thin twig rising from the middle of the cones, these were joined at the base. It resembled if gripped by the twig some curious babies rattle, or if sat on its base, a strange erect penis with four large testicles at its base.
The photo series with the model revolved around him simulating masturbation with the cones and twig rising from his naked loins. Single images by themselves look vaguely puzzling, but by putting them into an animation program, the movement of hand on twig and curious jumpy rocking motion of the animated model, took on an eerie and disturbing quality. I thought about this animated sequence at some length. What seemed to be interesting was the fractured nature of the animation. The number of still images was limited; the repetitive nature of the sequence became more and more annoying–never reaching any point of climax, merely destined to loop back on itself again and again. By experimenting with the series of potential soundtracks to accompany it, I decided that it needed something mechanical, almost industrial to accompany it. That seemed to me, to reverberate with ideas of the mechanical nature that we often approach erotic material and the industrialisation of sex and relationships. The fact that this was onanistic action added to the sense of pointlessness given that was no climax, and from the point of view of the viewer little or no erotic potential.
Gregory Hayman: Still from Stuck film
I wish I could say, that it was with some surprise that my colleagues were shocked by the piece, but I knew they would be from my previous screenings. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the image once expanded onto a large screen, did not render well and detail of the subject, especially around the groin area, was pretty much obscured–so all that you saw was a naked form and a wrist performing a masturbatory action without being properly able to see the fir cones and twig. The piece runs to about 3 1/2 min, but my colleagues probably saw less than a minute. The accompanying soundtrack I fashioned myself from found sound and audio to give it a stark, bleak, industrial sound of the pulsating rhythm which barely changed in pace except the final 20 seconds or so when it reached the descending crescendo and cut directly into the title sequence.
I guess, what I learned from this, was the people are shocked by this material. It certainly produced a vivid reaction. The tutor leading the crit, said it harks back to earlier angry pieces I had made during my first year as an undergraduate. I don’t really agree with this–the anger bit – I wasn’t in the least bit angry or particularly wanting to shock. I was more interested in the process of animation and in the absence of any other sequence of images I had, I simply used, as a do so often in my work, found images and tried to give them a new life and new meaning in this experimentation with moving format.
I talked to my colleague Jan the following day about my interest in sometimes wanting to provoke an audience and to elicit a strong reaction. I suppose I partly loathe indifference to anything, but artworks in particular. Yes there is a time and place for the merely decorative, the safe, for the anodyne, but part of me sees my practice as being one that challenges and tries to resist complacency. I understand the downsides perfectly well, and I’m aware of the dangers of over mediation, but I like to think of it as akin to Joseph Haydn’s ‘Surprise Symphony’ where he lures the audience into a false sense of security or even comfortable catatonia, and then hits them with an unexpected crescendo of high-volume. Having thus gained their attention, Haydn then delivered his most sublime melodies in the Symphony. Having shown my animation, I then showed four pieces of 2-D work–2 paintings; one based on an interpretation of Rubens’ Saturn Eating his Son; a painting in monochrome blue, of asparagus; a screen-print of figures in a landscape; and an etching of the 1950s retro image of a man dancing in a white shirt.
Gregory Hayman: Studio with Saturn Eating His Son on easel in studio
Rubens: Saturn Devouring His Son
Gregory Hayman: Saturn Eating His Son, Painting and Collage, 2014
Understandably, there was more interest in the 2-D works, after the masturbatory animation. Even the image of a man (god) eating a baby seemed tame and uncontroversial–how can that be? Asparagus was likened to vegetable phallus–somewhat surprising to me, and the 2 prints elicited very little discussion or comment.
Gregory Hayman: Princess, etching, 2014
What have I learned from this crit? To be sure, I’m aware of the power, and the danger of showing heavily graphic or controversial material. Secondly, seeing something controversial can inure an audience, and then they subsequently overlook something more horrific because the medium is changed, or the classical references or interpretation, renders the horror manageable. Thirdly, that my prints, are perhaps safe, even dull, and may be best avoided.
Gregory Hayman: Asparagus, 2014
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