NICKRANDS.COM
Nick Rands, b. 1955 Chester, UK.
Studied Fine Art at Reading University and Art Education at Bristol University/Bristol Polytechnic.
Taught art in UK and Botswana before working as art-gallery education officer. In 1992 he was Southern Arts-Brazil Exchange artist to Porto Alegre, Brazil. Moved to Brazil in 1998, and in 2016 moved to Caunes-Minervois, France.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2022
3000 e outras terras
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS Brazil
Line by Line Peintures / Dessins 1992 - 2022
La Table des Vignerons, Trausse, France
Rue Joseph Sicard, Caunes Minervois, France
Ausência
L’anciennne boulangerie, Caunes Minervois, France
Hillfield/Arborizada
Rue Joseph Sicard, Caunes Minervois, France
2021
Dix terres a la recheche d’un système perdu
Rue Joseph Sicard, Caunes Minervois, France
Greencat gallery, Caunes Minervois, France
2018
Lost Rivers Mosaic Paintings
8 Melior Street, London, UK
Horizontes Terrestres revisited
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2017
Horizontes Terrestres
ESPM, Porto Alegre, Brazil
2016
Ausência
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2015
Neckinger River Levels
Bermondsey Yard, London
2012
Um Quadrado no Rio Grande do Sul
Museu Júlio de Castilhos, Porto Alegre, Brazil
2011
Um Quadrado no Rio Grande do Sul
Museu de Arte de Santa Maria, Santa Maria, Brazil
A Gente
Museu do Trabalho, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2009
ChromaLife
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2008
ChromaLife
The Brick House, Brick Lane, London
2007
Obras Fotográficas
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2005
…and still counting…
Bermondsey Street Studio, London
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2004
Painting by Numbers
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2003
Where the sea meets the sky
Fotogaleria, Porto Alegre Brazil
2001
Mud Works
Espaço Cultural Sérgio Porto, Rio de Janeiro, RJ Brazil
Fundação Cultural de Criciuma, Criciuma SC Brazil
Pinturas
Fundação Cultural de Curitiba, PR Brazil
Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana, Porto Alegre RS. Brazil
Earthly Spheres
The Winchester Gallery, Winchester, UK
2000
Pinturas
Pinacoteca da Feevale, Novo Hamburgo, RS, Brazil
Eye Levels
Galeria Iberê Camargo, Usina do Gasômetro, Porto Alegre,
1999
Esferas Terrestres
Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil
1998
Earthly spheres
Warehouse, Norwich, UK
Watching the waves/Sowing the seed
Windsor Arts Centre Windsor, UK
1996
Grizedale Forest Painting residency
Gallery in The Forest, Grizedale, UK
Line by Line
Evreham Iver, Bucks, UK
1995
Line by Line
Isambard Brunel School. Portsmouth, UK
1994
Line by Line
The Peveril Centre. Eastleigh, UK
Atrium Gallery. Bournemouth University UK
Windrush Leisure Centre, Witney Oxon, UK
Bridgemary Community School, Gosport, UK
South Hill Park Arts Centre. Bracknell, UK
1992
Staying in Line
Bedales Gallery, Petersfield, UK
Upstairs Gallery, Upton Park. Dorset, UK
Instituto de Artes UFRGS Porto Alegre, R.S. Brazil
1982
Photographic Pieces/Timed Activities
Axiom Centre, Cheltenham, UK
GROUP SHOWS
2022
Haverá consequências
Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos, Viamão-RS Brazil
Digital graffiti 2022
Alys Beach, Florida USA
2020
du neuf à Caunes
Caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, France
2019
Ailleurs
La Tuilerie Saint Joseph, La Livinière, France
2017
Paintings from somewhere else
Youngblood, Cape Town, South Africa
2016
Digital Graffiti 2016
Alys Beach, Florida USA
2015
Ocupando Lucas 21
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS Brazil
2013
Magmart | international videoart festival
Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy
Digital Graffiti 2013
Alys Beach, Florida USA
7 Billionth Citizen
Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt
Solent Showcase Gallery, Southampton, UK
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK
Mamute Galeria, Porto Alegre, Brazil
2012
Des | Estruturas
Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos, Viamão, Brazil
2011
8th Mercosul Biennial
Porto Alegre/RS Brazil
2010
Digital Graffiti
Alys Beach, Florida USA
DIGIT 2010
Narrowsburg, New York, USA
Silêncios e Sussuros
Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos, Viamão, Brazil
2006
Um olhar fotográfico
Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos, Porto Alegre, Brazil
2004
Heterodoxia
MASC Florianópolis – SC Brazil
1+1+1
Museu da Gravura, Bagé, RS Brazil
2003
1+1+1
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS Brazil
Um território da fotografia
Galeria dos Arcos, Usina do Gasômetro, Porto Alegre,
III Salão National de Arte de Goiás
Goiania, GO Brazil
24º Salão de Arte de Riberão Preto
Riberão Preto, SP Brazil
2002
III Salão de Porto Alegre
Usina do Gasômetro Porto Alegre RS Brazil
II Salão National de Arte de Goiás
Goiania, GO Brazil
II Salão de Arte
UNI-BH, Belo Horizonte, MG Brazil
Forest
The Southern Arts Touring Exhibition Service, UK
2000
Bah-zart
Obra Aberta Porto Alegre RS Brazil
II Salão de Porto Alegre
Usina do Gasômetro, Porto Alegre
1999
Chart
Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK.
Coletiva
Obra Aberta, Galeria Chaves, Porto Alegre
1998
Sticks
The Southern Arts Touring Exhibition Service, UK.
1997
The Space of the Page
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK.
1996-7
Repetition
Corn Exchange Newbury, UK
Winchester Gallery, UK
The Gantry, Southampton UK
Milton Keynes Crafts Guild UK
Artsway, UK
Nuova Icona, Venice, Italy
Cacco Zanchi, Aalst, Belgium
1995
Words
Aspex Gallery Portsmouth, UK
Artspace
Square Tower Portsmouth, UK
1994
Art Kites
Milton Keynes Kite Festival. Milton Keynes, UK
1993
On Paper
Contact Gallery, Norwich, UK
Repetere
Solar dos Camara, Porto Alegre RS Brazil
1992
East End Open Studios
Deborah House, Hackney, London, UK
1990
Artists in Botswana
National Gallery of Botswana. Gaborone, Botswana
1984
R.W.A. Annual Exhibition,
Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK
1982
Group Photography 2
Axiom Centre, Cheltenham, UK
1978
Wessex Artists
Southampton City Art Gallery, UK
Muddy hands mark a blank surface.This ‘primitive’ gesture is followed by rationally drawn lines repeating the previous movement. From the beginning the work deals with opposite forces which stay harmoniously together. Chance and absence of design are contrasted with decision and action over it. The shapes made by parallel lines have a kind of pulsation as a latent action. The lines are made in a regular sequence of gestures, as a dance of which we can see only the traces; this rhythm is recorded on the surface. The energy is distributed equally and symmetrically. The body’s marks are the first pattern to be followed and one of the determinants of the work. With the body as a factor of proportion the resulting shapes are in equilibrium.
The process of repeating just a few elements results in work whose essence is clarity. Simple gestures, movements and lines are repeated to constitute a unity. Every line is meant to be as similar as possible to the previous one; however, this act produces small variations which are also part of the process.The movement is repeated but never identical, as a breath that is constant but never the same.
The choice of non-processed materials like mud and crude oil is related to the choice of pure and basic elements.The colours derive from the nature of the chosen material and the place where it was found rather than from any pictorial decision, as the drawings result from simple movements rather than from any descriptive activity.
The repetition of simple elements may suggest a purely minimal approach to making pictures. In these works, however, the variations and accidents of chance give each work a life and nature of its own.
Maria Lucia Cattani 1994
I use ordinary materials; those discarded from industry and those found in nature. I have used mud, engine oil, soot, differential oil (a very sickly smell) and the tar found on beaches.
I wanted to make pictures which had little to do with anything (I thought) except the movement of my hand, arm, body and the repetition of gesture – the only things one can be certain about.The pictures develop a rhythm of breathing and grow as nature. In tracing my line across the surface, I assert my presence and space in the same way (perhaps) as a young child making its first drawings. Sometimes the repetition leads almost to a trance, like the rhythm of a drummer or the repeated steps of a dancer.
The starting point for the pictures is the scale of the body: the height of one’s reach, the stretch of the arms, and the movement of limbs.There is no intended illusion of scale.The pictures are as big or small as the body and gesture that makes them.
They are not pictures ‘of ’ anything. They are records of an activity – the repeated movement of the human body – traces of movement through time.The arm rotates on its axis, or is disciplined in horizontal or vertical activity. Very few decisions have to be made – where to start, where to finish, when to reload the brush, whether to compensate for the irregularities which may occur, for instance in the drawing of a circle, or to let the shapes grow organically according to elements of chance.
I seldom know how a picture will look before I start. A few simple ‘rules’ are fixed - then it is simply a matter
of ‘performing’ the picture. It is always a surprise at the end, and the same rules can be repeated over again with different results.
Nick Rands 1994
If I stretch my arms next to the rest of myself and wonder where my fingers are - that is all the space I need as a painter.
Willem de Kooning.What Abstract Art MeansTo Me. 1951
Why have I blackened my square with a pencil? Because it is the humblest act the human sensibility can perform.
Kasimir Malevich
If the supply of working materials runs out, go down to
the beach and make lines in the sand with a bamboo stick, draw on the dry ground with a stream of piss, draw in the empty air the pattern of birdsong, the sound of water and wind and cartwheels and the humming of insects, and let the wind and water sweep it all away afterwards, but act from the conviction that all these pure devisings of my mind will magically and miraculously find an echo in the minds of others.
Joan Miró
.... I have always maintained that you did not need complicated and expensive apparatus to produce a work of art. You could go in the back yard and scrape up some mud and put it on some board the builders had left behind.
Roger Hilton 1974
Pensamentos aleatórios em torno de um quadrado
Tudo começa com um quadrado desenhado sobre um mapa, quatro cantos conectados por quatro linhas impostas, como uma moldura, sobre uma cartografia preexistente. Penso no artista caminhando, velejando, penso na sua relação com os mapas. Sua necessidade de direção, de estruturas que criem limites e definam um espaço. Para um artista isso poderia ser o espaço em branco de uma tela onde algo, que não sabemos, vai surgir.
Rio Grande do Sul: uma grande tela. O artista, ficamos sabendo, “lives and works in Porto Alegre and London”. Um artista navegante, perpetuamente encontrando seu caminho entre uma ilha e um continente, entre línguas, cidades e culturas. Entre pontos diferentes da bússola, Sul e Norte, carregado com todas as viagens anteriores ao longo dessa trajetória. Outrora, traçar mapas era uma forma de subjugar povos selvagens. Agora? Aqui? Remapear tornou-se tradução intercultural. Eu vejo o viajante como um nômade movendo-se ao longo das quatro linhas do seu quadrado, do seu próprio horizonte, procurando pelos cantos que tocam as arestas extremas, as fronteiras do Rio Grande do Sul. Uma até cruza a água. Os quatro cantos da Terra, em linha reta. Linhas de fuga, pontos de chegada.
Mas quando ele desenha o quadrado, não sabe o que vai encontrar no ponto de chegada. Isso é porque uma linha de fuga é também uma fuga do conhecimento e dos costumes, e do modo habitual de ver. Se você soubesse o que iria encontrar, não seria uma fuga. Você desenha uma linha e o que encontra ao final dela é o que você fielmente reproduz, sem edição ou censura ou escolhas. É uma cuidadosa arbitrariedade planejada, sem origem ou retorno, uma linha sem fim, pontuada apenas por suas próprias marcas cartográficas. Assim, seus panoramas são criados a partir de momentos específicos que surgem ao acaso: o que está lá é o que você traz de volta para mostrar. No lugar do pitoresco, você mostra o drama do céu, de oitenta céus, capturados a cada ponto onde a estrada e o quadrado intersectam-se. Você compra uma “câmara espiã” no eBay e, com ela presa a seus óculos, tira fotos da estrada a cada quilômetro. Homem e máquina, olhos e lentes – o artista como cyborg, programado para responder a intervalos predeterminados. Paisagem e céu retratados como eles se apresentam em designados momentos e entrelaçados em uma única narrativa em looping.
As fronteiras do quadrado não atendem a qualquer fronteira nacional ou política, ainda que existam como um modelo para definir a distância a ser coberta. Pelo contrário, são espaços entre lugares, liminares, onde tudo pode acontecer. Elas desterritorializam o terreno, que o artista tem que reivindicar de outra forma: ao coletar terra, punhados de barro de cada canto, que são armazenados, etiquetados e levados para seu ateliê em Porto Alegre. Barro como encarnação de um lugar, a matéria primordial da criação. E junto com o barro, o corpo do artista percorre o espaço, seguindo a linha na linha. As mãos que irão extrair novos sentidos da velha matéria. Um corpo nômade, constantemente em movimento, uma personificação de seu próprio processo artístico.
No ateliê o barro vira tinta, torna-se pintura. Quatro quadrados de barro/tinta estão na parede, marcardos por pontos dourados a intervalos cuidadosamente planejados. Tudo é ao mesmo tempo aleatório e sujeito ao cálculo. Isso não é como a própria Terra? Como a evolução? A criação emergindo sem forma, porque por baixo de tudo há uma fórmula, um grande plano. Um Projeto Inteligente? E no ateliê também, quatro bolas de barro surgem, cada uma de cor diferente. O arquivo do artista contém muitas bolas de barro, como na série anterior, Esferas Terrestres. Bolas de barro são um tema no trabalho, levando-nos sempre de volta para a questão dos materiais, da materialidade, do que um artista faz quando ela ou ele cria arte. A relação entre o fazer e o objeto feito, a mão e a imaginação, a matéria e o espírito. Estas quatro pinturas esféricas parecem o mundo visto do espaço, mas indiferenciadas, como quatro protótipos de um mundo-em-processo. Então, antes de fazer outra marca, antes dos continentes e oceanos, o Criador coloca um quadrado de folha de ouro em cada globo. Rio Grande do Sul. Um ponto ao sul torna-se o único polo de um mundo refeito.
Perto das quatro pinturas quadradas, das quatro pinturas esféricas e de uma montagem em looping de estrada/céu, há a projeção de quatro vídeos panorâmicos, um para cada canto do quadrado. Parecem quatro janelas verticais em movimento, cada uma com vista para uma paisagem diferente. A maior parte é céu e um quarto é terra, algumas vezes o horizonte de uma flui suavemente na outra, assim seus olhos são levados adiante em movimento contínuo. A mudança da luz, de dia pleno para amanhecer e crepúsculo, cria o efeito de movimento no tempo. Tempo e espaço se fundem em uma linha de fuga que dissolve as fronteiras entre eles, colocando-nos em um outro lugar. É a paisagem passando por nós, ou nós estamos passando por ela? Dois horizontes, dois sóis em céus adjacentes. A linha horizontal leva o olho de lado a lado, enquanto algumas vezes uma estrada distancia-se de nós, uma “ligne de fuite” desaparecendo na distância, diminuindo em direção a seu próprio ponto de fuga.
Linhas, esferas, quadrados, céu, paisagem, terra, folhas de ouro, imagens digitais, a matéria desta instalação. Movendo-se entre os modos de ver e de materializar, entre abstrato e concreto, o artista realiza em nosso nome o ato de tradução cultural que é a base da nossa percepção comum do mundo. Tudo começa com um quadrado e leva a tantas direções quantas quisermos seguir; linhas de fuga que nos transportam para longe, que nos libertam.
Jane Bryce
Professora de Literatura e Cinema Africanos, University of the West Indies, Barbados
RANDOM THOUGHTS AROUND A SQUARE
It begins with a square laid on a map, four corners connected by four lines imposed on a pre-existing cartography like a frame. I think of the artist walking, sailing, of his relationship with maps. His need for orientation, for grids that create boundaries and define a space. For an artist, it could be the blank space of a canvas where something, we don’t know what, will appear.
Rio Grande do Sul: a large canvas. The artist, we’re told, “reside e trabalha em Porto Alegre e Londres”. A navigating artist, perpetually finding his way between an island and a continent, between languages, cities, cultures. Between different points of the compass, South and North, freighted with all the previous journeys along that trajectory. Once, mapping was a way of subjugating savage peoples. Now? Here? Remapping has become intercultural translation. I see the traveller as a nomad moving along the four lines of his square, his self-made horizon, searching for the corners which touch the extreme outer edges, the borders of Rio Grande do Sul. One even crosses water. The four corners of the earth, straight as the crow flies. Lines of flight, points of arrival.
But when he draws the square, he doesn’t know what he’ll find at the point of arrival. That’s because a line of flight is also an escape from knowledge and habit and accustomed ways of seeing. If you knew what you would find, it wouldn’t be flight. You draw a line and what you find at the end of it is what you faithfully reproduce, without editing or censorship or exercising choice. It’s a carefully plotted arbitrariness, with no origin or return, an unending line punctuated only by your own cartographic markers. So your panoramas are created out of specific moments which arise at hazard: whatever’s there is what you bring back to show. In place of the picturesque, you show the drama of the sky, of eighty skies, captured at each point where road and square intersect. You buy a spy camera on eBay and, attached to your glasses, it takes a picture of the road every kilometre. Man and machine, eye and lens – the artist as cyborg, programmed to respond at pre-set intervals. Landscape and sky rendered as they offer themselves at designated moments and knitted together into a single looped narrative.
The borders of the square don’t answer to any national or political boundaries, though these exist as a template to define the distance to be covered. Instead, they are spaces between places, liminal, where anything can happen. They deterritorialise the terrain, which the artist has to claim in other ways. By collecting the earth, handfuls of mud from each corner, stored and labelled and driven back to his studio in Porto Alegre. Mud as embodiment of place, the primal matter of creation. And along with the mud, the artist’s body moves through space, following the line, on the line. The hands that will coax new meanings out of old matter. A nomad body, constantly in motion, an embodiment of its own artistic process.
In the studio, mud becomes paint, becomes paintings. Four squares of mud-paint hang on the wall, punctuated by gold dots at carefully plotted intervals. Everything is both random and subject to computation. Isn’t that like the earth itself? Like evolution? Creation emerging out of formlessness, because beneath it all there’s a formula, a grand plan. An Intelligent Design? And in the studio too, four big balls of mud appear, each one a different colour. The artist’s archive contains many balls of mud, as well as a previous series, Earthly Spheres. Mud balls are a theme in the work, returning us always to the question of materials, materiality, to what it is an artist does when she or he creates art. The relationship between the making and the made object, the hand and the imagination, matter and spirit. These four spherical paintings look like the world seen from space, but undifferentiated, like four prototypes of a world-in-process. Then, before making any other mark, before continents and oceans, the Maker lays one square of gold leaf on each globe. Rio Grande do Sul. A point in the South becomes the single pole of a remade world.
Next to the four square paintings, the four spherical paintings and the looped road/sky montage, there’s the projection of four panoramic videos, one from each corner of the square. It looks like four vertical moving widows, each looking out on a different landscape. It’s mostly sky and about a quarter earth, and sometimes the horizon in one flows seamlessly into the next so your eye is carried forward in a continuous movement. The changing light, from broad day to twilight to dawn, creates the effect of movement in time. Time and space coalesce in a line of flight that dissolves the boundaries between them, placing us in an elsewhere. Is the landscape passing us by, or are we passing through it? Two horizons, two suns in adjacent skies. The horizontal line leads the eye across, while sometimes a road leads away from us, a “ligne de fuite” disappearing into the distance, dwindling into its own vanishing point.
Lines, spheres, squares, landscape, sky, earth, gold leaf, digital images, the stuff of this installation. Moving between modes of seeing and embodying, between abstract and concrete, the artist performs on our behalf the act of cultural translation which is the basis of our common perception of the world. It starts with a square and leads in as many directions as we care to follow, lines of flight that carry us away, that set us free.
Jane Bryce
Professor of African Literature and Cinema, University of the West Indies, Barbados
Phrases found emblazoned on clothing in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay
between 1998 and 2022.
Orthography and word layout are as originally noted.
Text font and size have been standardised to fit a new format.
PAINTINGS
Untitled
mud and gold leaf on canvas
30 x 30 cm 2012
Pinhal da Serra constellation 2
mud and gold leaf on canvas
100 x 100 cm 2012
Upamarotí constellation 2
mud and gold leaf on canvas
100 x 100 cm 2012
Porto Lucena constellation 2
mud and gold leaf on canvas
100 x 100 cm 2012
Tavares constellation 2
mud and gold leaf on canvas
100 x 100 cm 2012
Upamarotí constellation 1
mud and gold leaf on canvas
60 x 60 cm 2012
Tavares constellation 1
mud and gold leaf on canvas
60 x 60 cm 2012
Pinhal da Serra constellation 1
mud and gold leaf on canvas
60 x 60 cm 2012
Porto Lucena constellation 1
mud and gold leaf on canvas
60 x 60 cm 2012
Pinhal da Serra constellation 3
mud on paper
55 x 55 cm, 2012
Porto Lucena constellation 3
mud on paper
55 x 55 cm 2012
Tavares constellation 3
mud on paper
55 x 55 cm 2012
Upamarotí constellation 3
mud on paper
55 x 55 cm 2012
Porto Lucena Lines
mud on canvas
30 x 30 cm 2012
Pinhal da Serra Lines
mud on canvas
30 x 30 cm 2012
Upamarotí Lines
mud on canvas
30 x 30 cm 2012
Tavares Lines
mud on canvas
30 x 30 cm 2012
Pinhal da Serra Lines2
mud and gold leaf on canvas
80 x 80 cm 2015
Porto Lucena Lines2
mud and gold leaf on canvas
80 x 80 cm 2015
Tavares Lines2
mud and gold leaf on canvas
80 x 80 cm 2015
Upamarotí Lines2
mud and gold leaf on canvas
80 x 80 cm 2015
Horizontes Terrestres Paperback 2018 66 pp. 21 x 21 cm
p.o.d. book with hand embossing
edition 50
Nick Rands, b. 1955 Chester, UK.
Studied Fine Art at Reading University and Art Education at Bristol University/Bristol Polytechnic.
Taught art in UK and Botswana before working as art-gallery education officer. In 1992 he was Southern Arts-Brazil Exchange artist to Porto Alegre, Brazil. Moved to Brazil in 1998, and in 2016 moved to Caunes-Minervois, France.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2022
3000 e outras terras
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS Brazil
Line by Line Peintures / Dessins 1992 - 2022
La Table des Vignerons, Trausse, France
Rue Joseph Sicard, Caunes Minervois, France
Ausência
L’anciennne boulangerie, Caunes Minervois, France
Hillfield/Arborizada
Rue Joseph Sicard, Caunes Minervois, France
2021
Dix terres a la recheche d’un système perdu
Rue Joseph Sicard, Caunes Minervois, France
Greencat gallery, Caunes Minervois, France
2018
Lost Rivers Mosaic Paintings
8 Melior Street, London, UK
Horizontes Terrestres revisited
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2017
Horizontes Terrestres
ESPM, Porto Alegre, Brazil
2016
Ausência
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2015
Neckinger River Levels
Bermondsey Yard, London
2012
Um Quadrado no Rio Grande do Sul
Museu Júlio de Castilhos, Porto Alegre, Brazil
2011
Um Quadrado no Rio Grande do Sul
Museu de Arte de Santa Maria, Santa Maria, Brazil
A Gente
Museu do Trabalho, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2009
ChromaLife
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2008
ChromaLife
The Brick House, Brick Lane, London
2007
Obras Fotográficas
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2005
…and still counting…
Bermondsey Street Studio, London
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2004
Painting by Numbers
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil
2003
Where the sea meets the sky
Fotogaleria, Porto Alegre Brazil
2001
Mud Works
Espaço Cultural Sérgio Porto, Rio de Janeiro, RJ Brazil
Fundação Cultural de Criciuma, Criciuma SC Brazil
Pinturas
Fundação Cultural de Curitiba, PR Brazil
Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana, Porto Alegre RS. Brazil
Earthly Spheres
The Winchester Gallery, Winchester, UK
2000
Pinturas
Pinacoteca da Feevale, Novo Hamburgo, RS, Brazil
Eye Levels
Galeria Iberê Camargo, Usina do Gasômetro, Porto Alegre,
1999
Esferas Terrestres
Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil
1998
Earthly spheres
Warehouse, Norwich, UK
Watching the waves/Sowing the seed
Windsor Arts Centre Windsor, UK
1996
Grizedale Forest Painting residency
Gallery in The Forest, Grizedale, UK
Line by Line
Evreham Iver, Bucks, UK
1995
Line by Line
Isambard Brunel School. Portsmouth, UK
1994
Line by Line
The Peveril Centre. Eastleigh, UK
Atrium Gallery. Bournemouth University UK
Windrush Leisure Centre, Witney Oxon, UK
Bridgemary Community School, Gosport, UK
South Hill Park Arts Centre. Bracknell, UK
1992
Staying in Line
Bedales Gallery, Petersfield, UK
Upstairs Gallery, Upton Park. Dorset, UK
Instituto de Artes UFRGS Porto Alegre, R.S. Brazil
1982
Photographic Pieces/Timed Activities
Axiom Centre, Cheltenham, UK
GROUP SHOWS
2022
Haverá consequências
Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos, Viamão-RS Brazil
Digital graffiti 2022
Alys Beach, Florida USA
2020
du neuf à Caunes
Caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, France
2019
Ailleurs
La Tuilerie Saint Joseph, La Livinière, France
2017
Paintings from somewhere else
Youngblood, Cape Town, South Africa
2016
Digital Graffiti 2016
Alys Beach, Florida USA
2015
Ocupando Lucas 21
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS Brazil
2013
Magmart | international videoart festival
Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy
Digital Graffiti 2013
Alys Beach, Florida USA
7 Billionth Citizen
Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt
Solent Showcase Gallery, Southampton, UK
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK
Mamute Galeria, Porto Alegre, Brazil
2012
Des | Estruturas
Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos, Viamão, Brazil
2011
8th Mercosul Biennial
Porto Alegre/RS Brazil
2010
Digital Graffiti
Alys Beach, Florida USA
DIGIT 2010
Narrowsburg, New York, USA
Silêncios e Sussuros
Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos, Viamão, Brazil
2006
Um olhar fotográfico
Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos, Porto Alegre, Brazil
2004
Heterodoxia
MASC Florianópolis – SC Brazil
1+1+1
Museu da Gravura, Bagé, RS Brazil
2003
1+1+1
Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS Brazil
Um território da fotografia
Galeria dos Arcos, Usina do Gasômetro, Porto Alegre,
III Salão National de Arte de Goiás
Goiania, GO Brazil
24º Salão de Arte de Riberão Preto
Riberão Preto, SP Brazil
2002
III Salão de Porto Alegre
Usina do Gasômetro Porto Alegre RS Brazil
II Salão National de Arte de Goiás
Goiania, GO Brazil
II Salão de Arte
UNI-BH, Belo Horizonte, MG Brazil
Forest
The Southern Arts Touring Exhibition Service, UK
2000
Bah-zart
Obra Aberta Porto Alegre RS Brazil
II Salão de Porto Alegre
Usina do Gasômetro, Porto Alegre
1999
Chart
Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK.
Coletiva
Obra Aberta, Galeria Chaves, Porto Alegre
1998
Sticks
The Southern Arts Touring Exhibition Service, UK.
1997
The Space of the Page
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK.
1996-7
Repetition
Corn Exchange Newbury, UK
Winchester Gallery, UK
The Gantry, Southampton UK
Milton Keynes Crafts Guild UK
Artsway, UK
Nuova Icona, Venice, Italy
Cacco Zanchi, Aalst, Belgium
1995
Words
Aspex Gallery Portsmouth, UK
Artspace
Square Tower Portsmouth, UK
1994
Art Kites
Milton Keynes Kite Festival. Milton Keynes, UK
1993
On Paper
Contact Gallery, Norwich, UK
Repetere
Solar dos Camara, Porto Alegre RS Brazil
1992
East End Open Studios
Deborah House, Hackney, London, UK
1990
Artists in Botswana
National Gallery of Botswana. Gaborone, Botswana
1984
R.W.A. Annual Exhibition,
Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK
1982
Group Photography 2
Axiom Centre, Cheltenham, UK
1978
Wessex Artists
Southampton City Art Gallery, UK
PHOTO: EDUARDO AIGNER
BETWEEN PRESENCE AND ABSENCE
The exhibition is titled Absence, but it can also be considered as the traces of a presence. It shows the possibility of working with loss through and in painting. It also reveals the intrinsic character of the work itself, of becoming something else – of going further, indicating directions and pointing towards an outcome. Immersed in the process of each painting, engaged with its possibilities and demands, Nick Rands also proceeds to reveal new possibilities of addressing loss, however minimally, through his work.
The exhibition consists of 65 paintings measuring 12 x 12 cm, and a limited-edition box of prints.
The purpose of this group of work was to use painting to instil a degree of importance, to restore and recreate traces of the fragility and transitory nature of human life. Working for the first time in more than 40 years with the foundations of what he learnt at school, the artist has returned to oil painting from observation, directly onto the canvas without any preparatory drawing.
They are paintings of details of clothing – real garments, traces of the person who wore them – framed with a window and depicted on the same scale. Each painting depicts a different garment, based on personal choice, without much analysis. Travelling between Brazil and France, at one stage Nick thought of working from photographs rather than the real objects, but soon discovered that the process was completely different: instead of traces of presence or absence, there was little but neutrality and emptiness.
Initially intending to produce a single painting from each garment, he now reveals a wish to return to some of the models and consider them from different angles. So the series is now virtually endless – any change will probably be suggested by the work itself in its own time.
Each painting has its own unique aesthetic value: less like chapters of a book and more like individual poems, he suggests. The subject matter indicates a direction of reading, but we cannot ignore their truly painterly characteristics as well: the intensity of depiction of detail, the suggestion of different textures and properties of the fabrics themselves, such as opacity and transparency, lightness and thickness, fluidity and roughness, conveying their tactile qualities; and also the deep sense of colour as an element of painting.
The series as a whole is highly evocative. Displayed more or less in the order in which they were painted – the only criterion for showing them in sequence without betraying their deeper meaning – the pictures reveal a long and intense engagement with loss.
As the series progressed, the artist rediscovered the plastic qualities of oil painting, which he describes as a “magical process”, connected to figurative painting, to which he has always felt some attraction, despite previously having worked with abstraction. “With a few brushstrokes, something begins to take shape”, he says.
Oil painting, working from observation, figuration and small formats mark a new stage in his work. Previously the process was almost automatic, making marks with fingers on surfaces painted with pigments collected from the earth by the artist himself. He compared that process to navigation, stating that it was important to know where you started from and where you were going: what happened on the way needed less reflection; they were automated gestures that only needed small corrections of direction. The new series establishes major differences in the artist’s poiesis and creative process in relation to earlier work. Dimensions have changed radically, from large pictures often bigger than one square metre, to small canvases measuring little more than 10 cm. This format offers a degree of intimism, encouraging a “good distance” for viewing that requires neither stepping back to see the whole, nor moving closer to look at the details.
The prints in the Fragments of Absence series relate to the paintings but with some key differences. The same number of images, ink-jet printed on paper the same size as the paintings and presented in a box, each print has a direct relationship with the corresponding painting but is made using a smaller framing window, capturing a small extract of the painting: window within a window, detail of a detail, each print appears almost abstract.
The experience of making those prints may be what lies behind the artist’s desire to paint even smaller pictures: to immerse himself in the real object of the model? Or something else, something new, not yet made? Only the work itself, guiding and guided by the hand of the artist, can answer those questions.
Icleia Borsa Cattani
November 2016
A return to a way of painting all but abandoned more than 40 years ago. Oil paint on canvas. Painting from direct observation. Looking at an object and translating movements of the eye into movements of the brush. Trying to depict what is in front of you as faithfully as possible.
Precious things; things you want to keep for their affective value.
Small pictures, because if they’re good enough size shouldn’t matter – you need to look closely, become intimate with intimate things, precious like jewels.
Painting is a slow, laborious process: testing colours, adjusting shape and proportion, a sustained process of looking, making marks as equivalents of the model, correcting, balancing, putting things in and taking things out, trying to remember how to do it, remembering from lessons taught and lessons learned. A painting takes a long time, so it needs to be something significant, something of value. And by investing all that time and effort the subject matter acquires greater significance and value. Depicting something in oil paint on canvas adds a certain weight to it. You can change the subject matter, leave bits out, emphasize parts, restore a frayed, faded garment or mend the cracks and chips in treasured ceramics: remove the signs of aging and mutability. Perhaps more memento vivere than memento mori.
Nick Rands, 2016
ENTRE PRESENÇA E AUSÊNCIA
Intitulada Ausência, essa mostra também pode ser pensada como vestígios de uma presença. Ela evidencia a possibilidade de elaboração da perda que se constrói pela e na pintura. Nela, também se constata a propriedade intrínseca da obra, de tornar-se outra coisa – de ir mais longe, de indicar caminhos e de apontar para um devir. Mergulhado na instauração de cada pintura, imerso nas suas possibilidades e demandas, Nick Rands também vai à frente e descortina novas possibilidades de prover à falta, ainda que minimamente, pelo seu trabalho.
A exposição é constituída por 65 telas de 12 x 12cm e de uma caixa com gravuras em edição limitada.
O objetivo desse conjunto de obras foi de atribuir certo peso, resgatar e recriar pela pintura os vestígios daquilo que é frágil e transitório, a vida humana. Nelas o artista retomou, pela primeira vez em mais de quarenta anos, os fundamentos da sua formação escolar: pintura a óleo, observação do real, motivo elaborado diretamente na tela, sem desenhos prévios.
Elas são pinturas de detalhes de roupas – roupas reais, vestígios do ser que as habitou – sobre as quais o pintor coloca uma janela (espaço vazio recortado em papelão) do tamanho das telas e transpõe para a pintura exatamente o que se encontra no interior da mesma. Cada pintura foi realizada tendo por motivo uma vestimenta diferente, a partir de uma escolha afetiva e sem muita racionalização. Morando entre o Brasil e a França, Nick as transporta consigo. Inicialmente, cogitou usar a fotografia para substituir as peças reais, mas uma única tentativa bastou para que constatasse que o processo diferia totalmente – não transparecia nesse processo, nem presença, nem ausência, nem vestígio, mas um campo neutro.
A ideia inicial era realizar uma única tela com cada roupa, mas agora o artista revela o desejo de retornar aos modelos já pintados para abordá-los sob outros ângulos. Trata-se, portanto, de uma série virtualmente sem fim – a própria obra indicará provavelmente sua mudança em algum momento.
Cada tela possui valor estético e é única: elas não são como capítulos de um livro, mas como poemas. Sua temática indica uma direção de leitura, mas não podemos ignorar, também, suas qualidades propriamente pictóricas: a agudez na representação dos detalhes, a sugestão das diferentes texturas e qualidades próprias aos tecidos, como opacidade e transparência, leveza e espessura, fluidez e rugosidade, atribuindo qualidades táteis ao representado. Do mesmo modo, importa o sentido profundo da cor como elemento pictórico.
A série como um todo possui, também, grande poder de evocação. Expostos na ordem em que foram pintados – único critério possível para dispô-los em sequência, sem trair seu sentido mais profundo – os quadros evidenciam um longo e aprofundado processo de elaboração da perda.
Ao mesmo tempo em que prossegue na série, o artista redescobre as qualidades plásticas da pintura a óleo no que descreve como um “processo mágico” que une à pintura figurativa, pela qual sempre se sentiu atraído, embora trabalhasse anteriormente com a abstração. Declara que “ao cabo de algumas poucas pinceladas, algo já começa a se definir”.
A tinta a óleo, a pintura de observação, a figuração, os pequenos formatos marcam uma nova etapa no seu trabalho. Antes, seu processo era quase automatizado, marcando pontos com o indicador em superfícies previamente pintadas – utilizando unicamente pigmentos feitos de terras, colhidas pelo artista, as vezes com base acrílica. Ele aproxima esse processo anterior à navegação, afirmando que o importante era saber de onde sair e onde chegar: o que acontecia no meio do caminho não necessitava muita reflexão, eram gestos automatizados que só demandavam pequenas correções de rumo.
Nas novas séries, se instauram grandes diferenças na poiética do artista e na poética das obras, em relação às precedentes. As dimensões foram radicalmente alteradas, de grandes telas que frequentemente ultrapassavam um metro quadrado, a pequenos suportes de pouco mais de dez centímetros de lado. Esse formato permite ao artista certo intimismo, promovendo uma “boa distância” do olhar, em que não necessita se afastar para apreender o todo, nem se aproximar para executar os detalhes.
As impressões Fragmentos de Ausência, por sua vez, embora se refiram às pinturas da série Ausência, apresentam diferenças marcantes em relação a essas. No mesmo número das pinturas, impressos em papéis da mesma dimensão daquelas, são impressões em jato de tinta, acomodadas em caixas. Cada gravura possui uma relação direta com a pintura correspondente. Todavia, ela é feita a partir de uma janela menor, colocada sobre a tela para extrair um pequeno trecho da mesma: janela da janela, detalhe do detalhe, cada gravura apresenta-se quase abstrata.
Talvez motivado por essa experiência, o artista revela o desejo de pintar telas cada vez menores: mergulho no objeto real que serve de modelo? Ou outra coisa, algo novo, ainda não feito? Só o próprio trabalho, guiando e sendo guiado pela mão do artista, poderá trazer as respostas.
Icleia Borsa Cattani
novembro de 2016
Um retorno a um modo de pintar quase abandonado há mais de 40 anos. Óleo sobre tela, feito da observação. Olhando o objeto e traduzindo o movimento dos olhos em movimentos do pincel. Tentado recriar o mais fielmente possível, o que está à frente.
Coisas preciosas, que você quer manter por causa de seu valor afetivo.
Pinturas pequenas, porque se elas forem boas, o tamanho não deverá importar – você precisa olhar de perto, tornar-se íntimo de coisas íntimas, preciosas como joias.
Pintar é um processo trabalhoso e vagaroso: testar as cores, ajustar as formas e as proporçōes, um processo de buscar equivalentes do modelo. Corrigir, avaliar, colocar e tirar coisas, tentar recordar como se faz, rememorando liçōes ensinadas e aprendidas.
Uma pintura requer uma longa dedicação, por isto ela precisa ser alguma coisa significante, ter algum valor. Por exigir este investimento e esforço, o tema escolhido adquire maior significado e valor. A pintura a óleo acrescenta um certo peso ao tema escolhido. Você pode mudá-lo, deixar algumas partes fora, evidenciar outras, restaurar uma roupa desgastada, desbotada, ou consertar as rachaduras e lascas de cerâmica preciosa: remover os sinais de envelhecimento e mutabilidade. Talvez mais memento vivere do que memento mori .
Nick Rands, 2018
EARTHLY SPHERES, 4000 spheres of earth, 1998-2020, installation at caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, 2020
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
EARTHLY SPHERES. Four thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Warehouse Artists’ Studios, Norwich, UK, 1998; Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK, 1999; The Winchester Gallery, Winchester, UK, 2001; Caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, 2020
EARTHLY SPHERES. Four thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Warehouse Artists’ Studios, Norwich, UK, 1998; Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK, 1999; The Winchester Gallery, Winchester, UK, 2001; Caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, 2020
EARTHLY SPHERES. Four thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Warehouse Artists’ Studios, Norwich, UK, 1998; Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK, 1999; The Winchester Gallery, Winchester, UK, 2001; Caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, 2020
EARTHLY SPHERES. Four thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Warehouse Artists’ Studios, Norwich, UK, 1998; Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK, 1999; The Winchester Gallery, Winchester, UK, 2001; Caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, 2020
SIERRA CABRERA
11 earths from Sierra Cabrera region, Almeria, Spain.
1996 edition of 3
3000 EARTHS
30 paintings. Mud on paper on canvas,
25 x 25 cm. 2020
4000 EARTHS
40 paintings Mud on paper on canvas,
25 x 25 cm. 2020 - 2022
SIERRA CABRERA PAINTINGS
Mud on paper on canvas, 30 x 30 cm. 2019
LARGE PAINTINGS
1998 EARTHS, Earth on paper on canvas,
100 x 150 cm, 2020
2000 EARTHS Earth on paper on canvas,
100 x 150 cm, 2022
4000 FINGERPRINTS Earth on paper on canvas,
100 x 150 cm, 2022
EDITIONS / PRINT
CEM TERRAS Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag
72 X 72cm, 2022
3000 TERRAS
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 110 x 93 cm, 2022
Touched 4000 times
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 128 x 80 cm, 2022
4000 EARTHS
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 86 x 136 cm, 2022
PROCESS
3000 SQUARES Work in progress Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Photographs by Eduardo Aigner
LETS FLOWER THE WORLD
John Cayley
Literature, according to standard definitions, is that part of writing – of, more broadly, the art of language – which we value and consider to be of “lasting artistic merit.” A Garment Literature makes a claim by setting the word in its title and also in the form it has adopted, the form, itself, of the book, an artist’s book most certainly, and also what can be read as a book of short poems. Now, moreover, its literature, as gallery exhibition and as – sculpturally? conceptually? – remodelled on new garments, highlights and features its words as themselves art, not simply as “artistic” writing. The potential “merit” of this language was originally noted by the artist in this context, Nick Rands, who collected the garment-printed words because he was both struck by their poetry and delighted by the laughter they evoked in him.
I don’t mean to denigrate or detract from the enjoyment that this language gives us by pointing out that we need to “know English” in order to share these particular pleasures, which are, broadly, those of humour based on misapprehension – on a kind of error-ridden linguistic slapstick – most of it likely to have been unintended. While strange choices of word or turns of phrase are often simply poetic in the garment literature, it is notable that errors of spelling and grammar are the chief sources of jollity. I do not think it is a coincidence that orthography and grammar are also those aspects of language which are most subject to prescriptive regulation by certain academic experts and by, typically, conservative language users who are keen to distinguish between language that is “proper” and language that is bad, mad, and – so they may claim – dangerous to use.
The literature on the garments was collected in South America, but it is part of a global phenomenon. High-end casual wear has its logos and branding, and often its taglines and slogans, whereas more demotic, popular casual wear must make its statements without luxury-brand marketing investment. T-shirt makers want to make statements that will set them apart, and so do T-shirt wearers. They want to do this in the most striking, broadly appealing, and value laden manner possible. And so, they turn to Global English, a language that everyone wants to share (and use to “share” on social media), the still predominant linguistic spectre of global empire, the language of the internet. Of course, this is an oversimplification. Chinese speakers, ‘in the west’ and globally, are, for example, treated to a garment literature of their own, with corresponding hilarious misapprehensions. The Chinese internet is also global. But for the time being, most of garment literature will be practiced in varieties of adopted English that collectively make up what I and other linguists may think of as a global dialect. Nick Rands estimates that between eighty and ninety percent of the garment inscriptions from which he collected were composed using this English.
Quite apart from the delight it generates in us as we wryly compare the phrases of a garment literature with those of the everyday English that we “know,” I want to defend and promote this literature as one possible flowering of an exemplary, authentic practice of language, one with “artistic merit” beyond any value we may discover in its so-called mistakes. This language is composed and published with the clear intention that its reading will be appreciated. Once published in retail outlets, the proof of its quality is borne out by sales. Not only does the initial audience for this literature read and approve it at the outlet, they will inevitably reread once the garment has entered their wardrobe, and, if they go on to wear what is now their garment literature, then they also republish it, seeking a broader appreciative readership. They have most certainly become co-publishers by doing this. They have put their money where their mouth is and their hearts on their sleeves (or chests). Insofar as they share the authorial intention, or style, or voice of the original garment writer, then they also share in the original maker’s expressive act. For those garment readers among the wearer’s acquaintances, the wearer may come across as the (co-)author of the sense and sentiment underlying whatever it is that their garment literature conveys. When you factor in the acknowledged poetry which many works of this literature express, then you must surely agree that, from a literary institutional point of view, the practices of garment literature are much more generous, collaborative, and radically co-creative than those of the literary world in general. In the world of letters, we see too often that authors are treated either like gods or like beggars, with only publishers and critics able to live reasonably well or managing to enjoy what they do for their livings.
And are we right to read the supposedly anglophone misapprehensions of Global English garment literature as errors in the first place? The practices of Global English garment literature are like those of any “natural language” community. The people in this community – which intersects and overlaps with our own – have things to say, stories to tell, and they also have the media they need for their communications. Disregarding spelling and grammar, it’s difficult to find an expressive moment in this selection by Nick Rands when the reader is any doubt about what is felt or meant. The characteristics of garment media do somewhat constrain the range of topics that are, typically, addressed, but this true for any writing. An author can write anything in principle, but for the sake of being appreciated they are wise to “GO STRAIGHT TO THE POINT / ALWAYS.” This is, after all, literature intended to be worn as it is read, literary “STYLE FOR LIVE.” Is “live” an error here or is it not simply a part of the poetry, expressing indeed the ars poetica of a living literature, one of the literatures that actually live? It is a literature that allows me to have deep “SYMPONY / WITH / LOVE PEOPLE,” indeed, a symphony of sympathy with people who live well and love what they wear. It makes me want to pony up and learn this language “properly.” But if I did, my learning, like those of the grammarians, would come after its events of language. It wouldn’t be as genuinely poetic, not really playing or “HONOR [ing] TH[e] DAILY / GAME / OF MAKING IT HABPEN,” not so worthy of “TRADE MARK / MADE / IN HEAVEN.”
The more conventional poetry that we are used to valuing as the highest form of literature is also obsessed with itself as a subject, often occupying its time with the claim that it makes life better in the playing out of its own poetic games. You can’t discount garment literature on that score. It’s just doing what poetry also does. And then there are the narratives. “FATAL CLUB / ONE MAN ENERGY / ROWING” – a more or less perfect micro-fiction, which we can contrast with the more domestic, hidden drama of “QUIET LIFE / SOUTHCIRCLE / UNDERGROUND.” We know, fundamentally, that we are all in the same fatal club, based on our mortality, making our own ways, however “cool” or even “EXTREMELY COLD” we may be, sometimes quietly, sometimes without being seen, like artists on the “SPACE TRAPELINE” of the counterculture. This literature has its commentary on our human situation, and it even has its own characteristics, for example, a tendency to be marine oriented, to deploy nautical metaphors and imagery, “THE WIDE FIELD SURVEY / SAILING ACROSS THE WORLD” “MARINE / WATER LINE / HUSKY STYLE.”
I just now found myself getting carried away in the subtly coastline world of garment literature, losing myself as I might in any other world of language made by other LOVE people, like myself. Perhaps Nick Rands is responsible for bringing this poetry to our attention by collecting, concentrating, and ordering this selection, but he did not “originally” write or print these words. They are words from a real community of language users, edited for us into a garment literature, one that is most certainly human-readable with pleasure. And some of this literature may come to be cherished, by other human garment wearers and by us. In these late days, consider the contrast with “Large Models” sporting deep fake “Language” that is output by machines, output basically to make you buy … the naked, bodiless, mindless, endless stuff they sell, described in voiceless text. Ignore the chatbots! Let’s put on a genuinely social medium, our “TRADITIONAL / EXSTACY BASIC / ORIGINAL WEAR.” “LETS / FLOWER / THE / WORLD” with garment literature.
John Cayley, February 2023
John Cayley is a maker and theorist of language art in programmable media, and Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University.Image Generation: augmented and reconfiguredis his most recent book.programmatology.com
