“I don’t know much about art, but . . . “

Actually I don’t know anything about art, but I’ve been reading an artist’s blog for a while. She writes very creatively on her blog, in a way that even slow, dull people like me can appreciate. But when she starts to write ‘seriously’ (as an art academic) I’m left way behind. Here’s an abstract of a paper she wrote a couple of years ago.

Fiona Edmonds Dobrijevich: Falling In: The Poetics of Wonder

As creative practitioners, our encounters with the world lead us increasingly to a point at which we find ourselves silenced by wonderment, located within that which Peter de Bolla terms “a state of mutism”, of uncertainty and unknowing. How much does one need to know, and when does knowing prevent one from seeing or feeling? This paper seeks to examine the importance of wonder in our relations with culture and creative endeavour. The universe of critical histories and theories engendered by art and writing prompts a need for that articulated by Eugen Fink as “wonderment in the face of the world,” a giving over to an affective, sensate navigation of image and text in both creative and interpretive process. In recent decades, the pervasive dominance of postmodernist cultural critique and the “fetishisation” of theory has lent weight to the proposition that the self is no more than an effect of language and power; Deconstructivist thought, having dissolved any claims made upon mystery and unknowing, failed to acknowledge any consideration of wonderment within a world increasingly defined by poststructural critique. Current investigations into the Sublime underline the vital importance of the affective and immersive properties of image and text, the basis of Sublimity’s causal structure upon fear prompts us to consider the source of this current venturing into the unfathomable and the unknowable, into a place of uncertainty, into the je ne sais quoi. As creative artists, we have a responsibility to make seen the invisible, reveal the unseen and to acknowledge the somatic impulse that leads us to the space “too deep for tears”. As educators, locating the point of engagement with creative process within a sense of uncertainty stimulates movement towards cognition via nonlinguistic modes of knowledge.

It was therefore with some trepidation that I set off to the opening of her latest exhibition last night. She doesn’t know me, and I didn’t get an invitation despite asking for one (I emailed a request, but maybe she was too busy preparing the exhibits to reply) , so I felt a little bit like an intruder as I approached the Sheffer Gallery in the dark back streets of Darlington.

I was early, of course, and there weren’t many people there when I arrived. Her Richard-Branson-look-alike husband was there, and a few friends. I could identify Fiona immediately from the couple of pictures I’ve seen, but she was different from my mental image. I suspect she was anxious. Who wouldn’t be – putting yourself (or your work, at least) up for public judgement?

She seemed to start to relax a little as more people arrived. Perhaps they were people she knew, not just random wackos who rolled in off the streets like me.

There were 43 works in all, most of which were blue-ish oils with an aquatic theme. There were a couple of charcoals, a few digital lightbox prints, and one DVD animation. That much I can say, but really, I didn’t understand them at all. I loved Rise, Fall (4), behind the artist in the blurry photograph above, but why is the woman dressed as she is? Clearly Fiona has a strong affinity with the water. In the pictures with people and water I got a very real feeling of unity between the human body and the body of water. It’s almost enough to make me want to explore the ocean, despite my phobia from a childhood near-drowning.