Flux 2021

If you can make it out to the show at Cre8ery, I highly recommend it over viewing photographs of original art online. There is simply no comparison. But if you cannot, this is the next best thing.

First and foremost though, you must download Peter Gabriel's song Signal to Noise, and listen to it while you look at and read about the images below. Here's the link to the studio version on Youtube.

I've included some fundamental information about each piece, and explore a little bit about how they relate to the music, to today, to history, and whatever else I might think of that is relevant. The title of each of the twelve pieces is drawn from the lyrics of the song, following it from beginning to end. If you can't quite make out the words, they are included below. If you have an comments about the work or the feelings that arise from it, leave a comment below and we'll carry on the conversation.

Exhibition Statement included at the show -

Even though Peter Gabriel's song Signal to Noise came out in 2002, I heard it for the first time only a couple years ago.

My pieces in this exhibit draw their titles from the lyrics of the song, and follow it in the order they are numbered. This is simply my response to the music, but I encourage you to listen to it (on your device with headphones if you can) while you ponder the images. If you feel what I feel, perhaps you will see what I see.

During that first listen, I was immediately transported to my visit to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Images of hundreds of former prisoners hung in the museum, their faces revealing a range of emotions: fear and despair, but also courage and hope. I was confounded yet again by humanity's ability to be cruel and shortsighted, while lost in the faces of those who were just like me.

It's in this place where this group of work began, Gabriel's song providing the catalyst to bring it out of me.

Today we live in a world that is dominated by small but powerful groups, a world that is generally indifferent to our individual needs. Individual thought is diminished for the sake of a marketable contrivance, all the while "we" champion the individual whose action best underscores the superficiality of it all. Invariably, the powerful groups are elevated by the noise, noise that may have some grounding in reality but is largely fabricated. Truth begins to share common ground with fantasy, until it is necessarily pushed to the side.

And to the individual for whom the truth is a fundamental value, particularly in a world where one becomes separated from those who are like-minded, it can feel like the image of the ideal is being lost, overwhelmed by the noise of a seemingly ever-growing majority whose words and deeds no longer make sense.

It will require an internal strength, resilience and hope, to carry us through, to find a way, to make a start.

Reymond Pagé

The Way That Things Go
6 by 6"
Watercolour

What You Fight For
6 by 6"
Watercolour

That Fuzzy Picture
6 by 6"
Watercolour

The genesis of these three images lies in the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. The power that emanated from these faces, or maybe the emotion that they evoked, was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. I couldn't imagine what these people faced. Having spent a lifetime building up their lives, in the blink of an eye it all came apart. What they had fought for, worked for, all leading to a point in time when there was nothing they could do against a tide of paranoia and cruelty, and everything came apart. A great deal of uncertainty in a very certain future.

The ink drawings over top of the portraits are culled from my photographs of the old Khmer Empire of Angkor that ruled the area a thousand years ago. A doorway, a Bayon face, a window, each with their own structure and symbology. While ancient Angkor was a magnificent city, purportedly the largest pre-industrial city in the world, I have little doubt that the crimes against 20th century Cambodians occurred in the pre-industrial era as well. But there is something about our existence that finds itself imbued in our history, and in our societies. As we walked around modern day Phnom Penh, it was as though I could feel the eyes of each of the victims of the Khmer Rouge purge. That despite the means of their deaths, they still held sway over the city. Despite the fact that the atrocities had happened barely more than a generation earlier, a sense of calm conviction seemed to penetrate the entire city.

In This Place
24 by 18"
Water soluble graphite

In This Place comes from a photograph that I took in Rabat, Morocco in 2018. Just steps from our comfortable hotel on Avenue Laalou, this building still stood, despite what seemed as obvious efforts not to do so. A face is superimposed over the plaster as a reminder of all those whose actions, for better or worse, make modern Morocco what it is today.

Can You Reassure Me
18 by 24"
Water soluble graphite

Can You Reassure Me is a water soluble graphite depiction of a tiny portion of a photo I took from a bus heading south out of Kolkata, India. There were no two windows alike on the entire face of this building, yet behind each one lived a family who could perhaps always escape to this humble home, to be comforted by a loved one, while the world outside raged.

World is Turning to Noise
18 by 24"
Water soluble graphite

I spoke at length with a friend after I finished this piece (a Winnipeg window in the Exchange) last year, about all the possible meanings of this piece, of each individual brick and the broken panes of glass. One of the big refrains to come out of this pandemic is, "We're all in this together." It seems to me that those are the words spoken by people who are doing just fine and will likely come out of these days better off than ever before. We are all bricks in this economy, clinging to the central core of a broken system. And broken systems/societies don't do a particularly good job of creating unbroken people or nurturing the broken ones. But we soldier on, doing our part to hold everything together while the world around us does its thing.

Surrounding Us
18 by 24"
Water soluble graphite

We spent some time on Chios Island a number of years ago, choosing Chios as it was quiet and uncrowded. The village of Volissos is small, half built up and half broken down. There is so much beauty in the unkempt, as it is a reflection of a life lived, all the experiences hammered into the surface but surely impacting the internal. It's surrounding us, and it's relentless.

Losing Sound and Sight
18 by 24"
Oil on board

Wrong From Right
20 by 15"
Mixed media

This is the part of the song that really hit me, where this idea really coalesced in my head. How our thoughts are powerful and how the people around us can help us to envision the world as a better place simply through their goodness. But when things are not right, when the world seems to be actively trying to make things worse and we are separated from that community of people who see a kinder and more thoughtful place, it can feel like something is drifting from the central values that got us this far. Two fine Winnipeg people, superimposed with two Winnipeg spaces.

All Things Beautiful and Bright
18 by 24"
Oil on board

While Rabat's glory days are definitely not behind her (it is the modern day capital of Morocco after all, and capital cities generally put on their best face), in some places it can certainly feel that way. Building facades that were at one time a sight to behold, now sit in half-ruin. The colour is still there, the memories for many likely remain, but sometimes the beautiful things are sinking, seemingly unopposed.

Something in My Heart
18 by 24"
Mixed media

Make a Start
15 by 20"
Water soluble graphite

Netflix, Amazon, computers, gaming, 24-hour news channels that focus on the immediate moment, but not so much the underlying realities. Nearly five billion mobile phone users on the planet, and almost four billion of those are smart phone users. Billions of game downloads. It's pretty easy to be unaware of all the chaos going on around us, as the modern world is fully equipped for us to do just that. We can try to buy our way above the chaos, live vicariously to try to escape it, or virtually in an attempt to ignore it. I'm of the belief, some days at least, that there are extraordinary things all around us. Little bursts of light that deliver a bit of hopefulness in the face of despair. Hope and imagination are a bit like sports, in that the more we practice them, the easier it becomes to execute the fundamentals. The more we look for hope, the more we will find it. And the more we imagine a better world, the better our world will become. I have always wondered what our world could look like if we spent more time on peace than on war. More time on equality than on self-aggrandizement. More time on celebrating our similarities than on insults over our differences. More time on listening than on crushing our enemies.

I see so much hope in that little sailboat.

“Turn up the signal, wipe out the noise.

Receive and transmit.”

As with all art, there are multiple ways to interpret these pieces. And frankly, if I were to start writing this up again next month (maybe even next week), I could quite easily take this somewhere else. But for the time being, this is what it is. It's about finding hope in trying times, maybe even elevating ourselves above the chaos without ignoring it. Or better yet, taking action.

Flux.

Lyrics to Signal to Noise

you know that way that things go

when what you fight for starts to fall

and in that fuzzy picture

the writing stands out on the wall

so clearly on the wall

send out the signals

deep and loud

and in this place

can you reassure me

with a touch a smile

while the cradle’s burning

all the while the world is turning to noise

oh the more that it’s surrounding us

the more that it destroys

turn up the signal

wipe out the noise

send out the signals

deep and loud

man i’m losing sound and sight

of all those who can tell me wrong from right

when all things beautiful and bright

sink in the night

yet there’s still something in my heart

that can find a way

to make a start

to turn on the signal

wipe out the noise

wipe out the noise

you know that’s it 

receive and transmit 

Windows of Kolkata

There was something about this particular Kolkata window that seemed absolutely transcendent to me. The exposed brick, open shutter, the sheet, the bars. Every element in the image added up to something I could not explain, but could feel connecting deep within me. Perhaps the ten weeks of travelling around India by that point had something to do with it, as well as the way were travelling around India. We were embedding ourselves into a society in a fundamental fashion, but also from a perspective that allowed us the freedom to exit at any point should things go awry. That freedom allowed me to examine society with a micro lens while forever keeping a distance between us. I'm struggling to explain the way that distance impacted my feelings about India, or perhaps whether that distance means that I could never have a true understanding of India.
Regardless, this window made me understand how India is so much more than the sum of its parts.

It Speaks to Me
Water soluble graphite on paper
Sold

Distance
Oil on board, 24 by 48"
Sold

Another Kolkata window -

Skin Deep
Water soluble graphite on paper, 17 by 22"
$700

The Spanish Window

If there's one thing I can't get enough of, it's architectural detail. Doors, windows, columns, stairs, carved stone, shaped plaster - it goes on and on.
A recent trip to southern Spain simply presented more opportunity to bask in the warmth of more fascinating building styles. Of course, I can find some of this kind of stuff around my own city, but its familiarity provides ample cover and often tired eyes. Travel has a way of awakening one's mind and spirit to the new and old and the always there, and our time in Andalucia (and Toledo and Madrid) was yet more evidence that this is true.

The chronology doesn't really matter, but it will give an idea of how we travel. Since we only had two weeks, this wasn't slow travel, as in the manner of our 275 day trip around the world with our kids, but it was by no means fast either.
We arrived in Madrid, and within a couple hours were on a train to Toledo. Two nights in Toledo and then we whisked off to Seville for a four night stay. On one of those days, we trained to and from Cordoba, because, you know, more architecture. We then rented a car and drove to Arcos de la Frontera for a walkabout and some lunch, then to Zahara de la Frontera for a climb up the hill to the old fort for some dazzling views across the countryside. After a couple hours, we carried on to Ronda, and spent two nights. Back in the car for a pleasant drive to Granada, where we spent three nights under the lights of the Alhambra, then busted it back to Madrid, with a pit stop in Baeza for an extended lunch.
We could've spent one night and a couple days in Seville, and one night in Granada, seeing the Alhambra in the morning and then taking off for somewhere else. That would've given us another five days (!wow!) to see more places. But that's not really us. There is just too much to see and enjoy in almost every place to breeze through without taking some time to just wander aimlessly, sitting at a cafe when your legs call for it, watching the city live and breathe.
In and amongst all this wandering and sitting and breathing, a feeling comes alive inside me, one that asks whether I could live in this place (language barriers aside!). Many times, the answer is yes. I don't know for how long, but for a few months? Certainly. A year? Maybe. I imagine all the places that I would sit with a book, all the new foods I would try, all the streets I'd stalk with my camera, all the alleys in which I would set up an easel.
Here is a celebration of taking it slow, a journey through southern Spain (although many of these are from Madrid...) and all her wondrous, windowed glory.

Want a little bit of Spain to brighten your decor? You can purchase this print in a variety of sizes, featuring forty favourite Spanish windows. Find it on Redbubble.