In The Room

Ruan and Catalina, Tavistock Block, Aylesbury Estate, London  (from Behind The Brutal Facade) © Richard Ansett 2020

This image is of Ruan with his mother Catalina in the Taplow block of the Aylesbury Estate overlooking the notorious Wendover Tower for my latest series Beyond The Brutal Facade capturing the lives of the last tenants of the estate once labelled the most notorious in Britain.

There are many examples in art history of this trope "in which a figure stares out from an otherwise self-contained canvas drawing the viewer in".* 'Freedom From Want' captures Norman Rockwell's neighbour in the bottom right of the composition cheekily breaking the spell of the otherwise perfectly observed and terrifyingly heteronormative scene.

Free From Want - Norman Rockwell, 1943

Botticelli's conceit in inserting himself amongst the most important citizens of Florence in the Adoration of the Magi still has the desired effect of bringing a radical shift in perception literally and metaphorically whilst drawing us in to join the crowd to witness this monumental moment of history.

Adoration of the Magi, Sandro Botticelli 1476

It creates a fascinating jolt to the psyche, often this device is explained away as more of an invitation to the viewer to cross the divide and enter into the work but its a two way street. The subject is equally joining us in our reality across the void of time and space. Its unsettling but further the use of this tactic has another profound affect on me. It is an interruption in the trusted narrative the artist has worked so hard to weave; to break the spell we are creating. It invites us to question the reality that is so convincingly on display and therefore challenges the security of our worldview . It is a device that stimulates open and existential questions about the nature of our reality beyond the everyday human experience.

One of my techniques in my relationship with a sitter is to ask them to look into the lens and 'connect' to an otherwise unknown future audience and attempt to communicate silently the message they might wish to deliver. This image however is a wonderful synergy of accident and design, a rare defining moment of a spontaneous glance when I had begun to think the defining moment was dead.

*ArtnetNews - Katie White 11.26.2020 - Here are 3 things you might not know about 'Freedom From Want.'

Extended Caption

I have been asked by the National Portrait Gallery London for an extended caption that might bring some insights in the creation of 'Grayson Perry, Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, 2013' for the upcoming exhibition at Chelmsford Museum, Spring 2020.

Submitted Draft

'It would not be original to describe the Starr Auditorium at Tate Modern as ‘womb-like’, the deep red envelopes you and like a foetus I was looking for the exit when I found this corner. It challenges reality just enough for it to lend a hand in examining this unique and complex subject. This portrait is a record of the first time I met Grayson Perry.

I consider my most successful portraits to be when I am able to document the literal first meeting with my subjects, they are invited in front of the lens without any conventional niceties and often in silence. In a portrait of the famous the resulting awkwardness and vulnerability can feel like iconoclasm but not in a negative sense, I am accidentally de-constructing the myths of celebrity because my main interest is in examining the human condition it masks. I enjoy photographing artists but there is a particular challenge in photographing Grayson Perry, who can present an alternative, equally valid persona ‘Claire’. Claire’s appearance is so radical as to parody the very notion of persona and in this first opportunity to represent her I was determined not to be seduced by the vivid character that protects him. Her otherwise infectious demeanour was met by a deliberate ambivalence that inspired this briefest glimpse that now represents the serious and powerful figure of the contemporary art world, influencer and commentator on the British national character…in a dress.

Perry has spoken to me since about the experience of being the subject of a photograph as ‘observing the photographer with equal fascination’ and this has remained with me since as the closest thing I can share about what he is like. It is the very definition of empathy, to step out of one’s ego in the true exploration of the reality of another person's life. Perry is the poster girl for an empathy with a more complex idea of what Britishness is, it is closer to a lot of people’s reality, not in any narrow definition of gender or sexuality, but existentially. This is his most generous aspect, like any artist the extremes of vulnerability and ego exist within him but he allows us to form our own relationship to him, projecting our own thoughts and feelings onto Claire and she loves the attention.'

The Rules of the Engagement

Naked woman and sofa, 2018 © Richard Ansett 2018

I am again focused on mortal detail working with my muse Ms Beryl Nesbitt very much in line with my image of another great muse and model Geoff transforming from Tina. There is nothing Beryl can do that does not fascinate me, she is my mother alive and dead and her memory of her mother was that she was a bitch. I am continuing a tradition of 'the artist's nude reclining' but photography must be more than pastiche in its insecure demands for recognition and I refuse to present work that purports to be art through mimicry alone. So this is a moment in time either side of the tradition and beyond the frame.

I was concerned that Beryl might die before I could explore her mortal body and capture her extraordinary nature in aspic. I did not want to miss another opportunity to engage with my mother on my terms and Beryl is happy to participate in any role play that in some way satisfies her own needs.

Neue Sachlichkeit is an attempt at an unadulterated response, the world stripped bare of sentimental nostalgia and conventional beauty. Only in recognising the impossibility of the task can we come close to achieving our goal.  A practice still useful now in exposing the contemporary blocks to any successful engagement with the present.

Some rules of Neue Sachlichkeit practice:

1) an image cannot be (or even feel) adulterated. The image and meaning of a subject can only be influenced ‘in camera’ through the manipulation of the world in front of the lens. Authenticity demands a palpable genuineness regardless of and challenging the established rules of aesthetics.

2) The image must be stripped of personal or sympathetic notions both in content and information. #Empathy and #sympathy if any must be left to the observer and the subject #humanity should be exposed at odds to the practice and accentuated through exposure to it. 

3) Presence of the artist as deliberate or accidental protagonist must be declared. No image should imply truthful representation. 

4) Images must be existentially representative of the era in which they are formed, archaic aesthetic notions of nostalgia and beauty must be recognised as crutches for short term gratification distracting from a more honest engagement with the present. Archaic rules seen as established and natural must be challenged and subjugated for a new understanding and a new relationship to the present seen as beautiful. See article for Hunger magazine Film Is Dead.

5) An arbiter of success of any image in the artist's mind is in its legacy and value to an imagined future audience 

6) Any experiment with objectivism must acknowledge the impossibility of objectivism.

Out of Place

There is an inevitable existential loneliness associated with adoption, a detachment from one's very genetic foundations can have a profound effect on our sense of place in the world.  With the acceptance of this, comes a realisation that the other side of the coin of the great gift of love and rescue by our adopted parents, is the trauma of loss and abandonment.

Stephanie (below) is adopted, I felt she had a great need to make sense of her world. When I shared that I was adopted too, I seemed to her like a successful survivor of the transition from one universe to another. I brought her outside and placed her in the mud. She did not feel she belonged here and it was not where she wanted to be.

Stephanie standing in the mud © Richard Ansett

Wedding Bells

There are not many better examples of something that achieves so much by doing so little. Whilst validating or elevating works, the gallery space is equally a magnifier of fears and anxieties. It can be a vehicle for intimidation and a mirror for cynicism. It’s an existential playground. (I apologize for using the e word but it is).

If artists choose to enter into this silent contract, there must be a negotiation of the complex and unspoken rules. Some artists choose to engage whilst others opt for an entirely different form of space. Banksy’s work ends up in galleries but they are often strange bulldozed sections of the world, transported from life into a gallery by curators. With genius simplicity Tillmans came close to deconstructing the infection of middle class doctrines that dominate the gallery experience. Other famous examples that spring to my mind are Mark Wallinger’s ‘Sleeper’ and ‘State Britain’ and Martin Creed’s ‘Work no. 227’. An exhibition should not have to be perfectly formed and tied with a pretty bow; I am learning that it can be space purely for the development, experiment and discussion without a final defined resolution.

The only reasonable analogy I can think for the artist - gallery relationship, is the wedding. We can try to make it our own, everyone wants it to be a personal experience, some try to subvert it, to make it unique but in the end, it is a wedding, steeped in an inescapable tradition and an overwhelming weight of historical and cultural precedent. This must be accepted if there is any chance of having a lovely day.

The relationship of work, space and audience was at the forefront of our minds during the development of the show ‘Portraits’ at Tenderpixel. We took the model of the mundane gallery presentation; devoid of smoke and mirrors and (in the case of ‘Untitled, 2013’) then juxtaposed this against the works lacking in narrative explanation. The balance was predominantly gallery; small prints of absence in space. It appeared to be a show about something whilst stripping away the established mechanisms of seeing.

We are not selling a Twix here afterall or making sense of the world in a Salgado-esq photo essay. Content is irrelevant, one desire is to promote an undirected emotional reaction. It felt like a risk, a little dangerous even but not life threatening.

Brian Eno said, “Art is a plane crash you can walk away from.”

The only destructive reaction that attempts to defeat its purpose is cynicsm but even this is a reflection of a viewers state of mind and a mirror of their relationship to the space in that moment too. ‘Portraits’ is not a literal or ironic title of the show, it is an adjective for what the show attempts to achieve. It is a reflection of each unique response and reaction to the work. It is an analysis of the viewer as subject; a portrait of us as we engage.

Any concept of success attributed to this show can be measured for me by the broad variety of adjectives used to describe the experience. This lack of a commonality is a validation and an indication of how we have adjusted to the invisible mechanisms that aid and influence the way we interpret. This applies especially to photography as a powerful medium of the age; we should not assume the same rules of conventional media apply.

Richard Ansett 'PORTRAITS' - series 'Untitled, 2013' © Tina Hage/Tenderpixel

Lion Hunting in Essex

On Sunday 26th August a couple's reported sighting of a large cat like creature in the fields surrounding St Ostyth near Clacton-on-Sea, Essex provoked a massive police response. Search teams including two helicopters with thermal imaging equipment scoured the countryside followed by a media circus.  A spokesperson stressed, the incident was not being treated as a hoax. Mr and Mrs Atkin who spotted the creature said "Whatever it was, it's definitely still out there."

Assisted by Mr Richard Brown, I embarked on a safari to seek out the resonance of this creature in the Essex landscape. We drove up to the area the day after the media circus; the search had been called off but the police still considered it a serious enquiry. There was barely any evidence of the previous day's events except a residual and palpable tension projected onto the terrain.

When we finally returned home, I found Richard Sawdon Smith (winner of the John Kobal Awards 1997) standing in my kitchen. We spoke about the presence of absence in landscape.

This project explores the experience of reality affected by circumstance, these landscapes were the same before the media reports of an escaped wild animal, they are imbued with the fear of the observer. it is an observation of the impossibility of reflecting reality and truth when we are consciously and unconsciously influenced. These ordinary landscapes were for a short period of time transformed into a dangerous Jungian jungle, observed through the filter of our most primal instincts of fight and flight.

Transposed into the gallery environment, away from the zone of perceived danger, the images become a record of the influences affecting an observer. This series is a further discussion on the nature of Pareidolia as it applies to how we view art as audience; the dichotomy between what is there and what we perceive to be there as unique and should not be assumed to be shared.

Update 10.08.2015

I went into the National Gallery in search of an unrelated reference for another project and came across Henri Rousseau's 'Surprised!' 1891 in Gallery 45. Whilst Rousseau gained knowledge of the jungle serving as a regimental bandsman in Mexico in the 1860s, this painting is thought to be inspired by visits to the Paris botanical gardens.

Image_4600, Lion Hunting in Essex © Richard Ansett 2012

Image_4528, Lion Hunting in Essex © Richard Ansett 2012

Image_4531, Lion Hunting in Essex © Richard Ansett 2012

Image_4496. Lion Hunting in Essex © Richard Ansett 2012