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By Sandy Sykes

I work with myth. I work with myths throughout history and with myths of today. Roland Barthes has written that Myth is a type of speech..... a system of 'Leaks into the Mirror' Woodcut 54"x40" 1997communication... a series of signs and that the knowledge contained in a mythical concept is confused, made of yielding shapeless associations ... a formless, unstable, nebulous condensation He suggests that the function of myth ... is to be taken possession of - deciphered, read ... and the concept or meaning held within the nebulous layers and signs are to be taken out/taken on - interpreted by the viewer, reader or listener

So, in the cauldron of selected images, pieces of text, qualities of surface, I mix a visual tale of signs and symbols which float up through time and engage the present in a dialogue of suggested possibilities. I re-cycle the heroes of yesterday: I adopt legends and relate them to our own world of 30 second commercials, instant tabloid infamy; of soaps and sound bites. In a series of hand-rubbed woodcuts made over the last three years, 5ft. x 4ft. in size, I have used folk and fairy story to reflect the interdependence of humans and animals in the long history of domestic and working situations. I use the tenuous existence of the three little pigs as metaphors for tenant and landlord.

The 19th century population move from the countryside into the manufacturing towns, when mechanisation replaced horse - power, was the beginning of the changes in our whole concept of society and landscape. I comment humorously on the subsequent human love affair with the automobile. Now the car is representative of the status of the owner and metal and oil have replaced bone and blood. I examine the traditional role of women as protector of hearth, family and child in the semi-starved conditions of cottage husbandry before Grandma and Red Riding Hood were gobbled up by the Factory wolf. Here, however the beast is not cut open to allow release and new life to the victims, but keeps on swallowing. I reveal the plight of London work - house children transported as slaves into the northern Textile Mills. Rewards in heaven, promised by the powers of Government and Religion somehow did not seem enough.

'Skin'  Woodcut  40"x29"  1995Ancient stories of moral and mischief, survival and regeneration have been shared around firesides as long as humans have inhabited the earth. Kinship and common cause lent value to the tales. Joseph Cambell in his preface to Grimm’s Fairy Tales writes that storytellers were masters of the human spirit, teaching a wisdom of death and life. And the thesaurus of the myth motifs was their vocabulary. They brooded on the state and ways of man, and through their brooding came to wisdom; then teaching, with the aid of the picture language of the myth they worked changes in the pattern of their inherited iconography. The universe of nature and the rules of religion fought side by side for control of popular imagination. In the stone book of the cathedral structure the caricature of the fore-man was carved 100 ft up in the vaulting as a workman’s' secret joke; masons carved the mouse being chased by the cat around the lintel of stained glass scenes from the Crucifixion. Life goes on.

In my prints time and change are represented by constructed panels of Indian rag, rice or grain papers of rough and transparent quality. They are a mass of inconsistency and blemish and an obvious product of the human hand. A variety of oil- based inks of opacity, translucency and glaze are applied to draw the viewer into the surface and through the other side. A harmony of blending lulls us into a false sense of security as the abrupt and strident colour screams its disparity. Disintegration and softening of objects or edges call to mind the decaying, crumbling textures of skin and flesh, which is our human condition. A shocking or funny incident relieves the tension as the eye is encouraged to float, meander, glide, or jump, or is pulled to an abrupt halt at a focus of the reading. Hand- rubbed woodcuts and deeply bitten etchings provide a complexity of images, attacked and cohered from all sides of the wood or metal. Collaged and muti-layered they hide as much as they reveal. Nothing is stated; much is questioned. My tale is slow in the telling.

'Ghost'   Woodcut  56"x42"  1995In much of the world in recent years television has taken over the role of narrator. Sitting in the corner in its box, it informs us of our needs. We identify with stereotypes in dramas and sports programmes - the victim, the joker, the super star, the villain. We emulate our heroes and desire their possessions. Participation in the consumption of goods ensures our value in society. Without the means to join in we become isolated individuals. In this area of conflict, where suggested need and unequal means dance uneasily across the headlines of our daily lives, I seek to place my ideas. I work in series in paintings, drawings and prints to cover the ground of argument and opinion in the subjects of my concern. I quote from Gore Vidal in his article Gods and Greens, In my lifetime and country I have watched governors manipulate opinion with the greatest of ease. Certain races, arbitrary categories of human beings, political systems are demonised and trivialised on a daily and unrelenting basis. These are the carefully crafted subliminal opinionated messages that hiss through the airwaves and into the minds of everyone from the first switching on of the cathode ray tube to the last T.V. supper when the light goes out...

Consumer culture and T.V. have created a fragmented multi- imaged world which has effaced the distinction between the real and the imaginary. This has been likened by various philosophers to the Medieval fair or carnival where there is little coherent sequence but a multitude of booths exhibiting and revealing sights and sounds of the grotesque and extraordinary: the larger than life; the unbelievable and the wonderful. We become viewers rather than participators. Life moves so fast we find difficulty in keeping up with the changes. We feel inadequate in our roles and insecure in our sequence and history. In repeating the concerns of Frankenstein’s monster, Who am I ? What was I ? Whence did I come? What was my destination? - So we may ask ourselves today. Who are we ? What are we ? Who is designing us ? Where are we going ?

The full title of Mary Shelley’s novel is Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus,. Gore Vidal continues in his article, Prometheus stole fire from Heaven so that we could not only cook dinner but one another. We create, we destroy. Balance is always what we have needed So Prometheus, in defying the Gods in Greek Mythology, combines the roles of father of technology, friend of mankind and supreme rebel. His triple roles and inflicted suffering, hovering between the Heavens and the world of Human Beings, render him defiant yet powerless. Unsure of his identity and place in the world he can only live from one insecure day to the next. He says in Aeschylus play Prometheus Bound.

Aye, I caused mortals no longer to foresee their doom

I caused blind hopes to dwell within their breasts !

David Elliot writes in 1995 Doomsday is possible but not inevitable. In a world in which nuclear and chemical pollution, global warming, AIDS and other epidemics run out of control against a background of division and exploitation, between rich and poor, north and south, waged and unemployed, housed and homeless, no culture can remain insular. Our individual survival lies in the confrontation of these uncomfortable facts. This is not ostensibly a statement of morality or ethics, mearly of self interest Within the maelstrom of global politics and consumer fantasy we lose our sense of reality and unreality. We ourselves are becoming composite creatures, made up of bits and pieces, hiding behind stereotypical masks, with our multiple roles and many personalities. So, in my latest work, the mirror, the dual being, the reversed and reflected object, the window and the veil, are an attempt to confront the problem of the individual seeking itself in the plethora of options. As Angela Carter writes in her novel The Passion of New Eve, I sensed all the lure of that narcissistic loss of being, when the face leaks into the looking- glass like water into sand.

Bibliography

Barthes, Roland Myth Today from A Roland Barthes Reader: Vintage Edition 1993

Shelly, Mary Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus written 1897

The Readers Library Publishing Co. Ltd.

Vidal, Gore Gods and Greens 1990 Pub in Observer Newspaper

based on Green Thoughts made for Channel 40s Opinions by Clarke Productions

Campbell, Joseph, Preface to The Complete Grimms Fairy Tales

Routledge Keegan & Paul 1975

Elliot, David After Omega Pub Art & Design Magazine

The Ideal Place Academy Group Ltd 1995

Aeschylus (525-456 BC) Prometheus Bound Translation Philip Vellcott Penguin Classics

Carter, Angela The Passion of New Eve Virago Press 1982


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