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7 miniature paintings were shown at a recent exhibition of my work in a
local café. To ‘know’ someone is a very singular experience,
and one that is only based on whatever information is discerned through
this process. When meeting people during a ten day trip in Spain recently, I realised that it was a totally different social experience to normal life. In the fleeting traveller context it is less appropriate to judge character and taste, as these trifling issues get in the way of the far more important consideration as to what mutually beneficial shared experience you can indulge in. Can you ‘know’ another traveller in the short time that you share time with them? These paintings display a name, an interpretation of the subject’s photograph, and one piece of personal information. I have avoided disclosing non personal information, such as where the subject is from, how old they are and where I met them. The only information I have supplied is that which one may describe in order to define who they are. However, I have avoided listing likes, dislikes or anything too emotional so that the character profile that is built up by the audience is detached and therefore only based on the information supplied by the paintings. I have displayed the paintings in a way that references the peculiar nature of human kinship. The picture frames imitate the way we display photographs of people who we are close to and love, while the Spanish newspaper collages are intended to remind the audience of the ephemeral nature of the relationships documented. We are never likely to learn any more about these characters than what has been presented, filtered through my own perception. The audience perhaps now knows these people as well as I do. The piece intends to inspire viewers to ask, ‘what does it mean to know someone?’ |