| Article by Gill Hedley for www.axis.org Maya Ramsay's work has a quiet presence, the initial impact of which is aesthetic. Each work is seductive and a careful use of scale draws the viewer in close. There is an apparent reference to modernist abstract expressionist painting, more modest though no less intense. However, the surfaces are evasive and the method of making is far from painting. Closer inspection reveals an unspecific material and a sense of surface archaeology. The marks are in fact the paint and detritus from other people's studio floors, lifted by scalpel exactly as found. They create the kind of imaginative landscape of the mind that a damp wall or flames in a fire induce. Leonardo recommended that his pupils 'study a stain on a wall. Imagination can discover a landscape with mountains, ruins, woods, battles, figures in action, expressions, and faces.'1 Her references are to politics and history so that the marks, splashes and stains invite or indeed compel us to infer the accretions of violence and the cost to civilians of war and global inequality. What appears at first to be seductive becomes disturbing, in part because it is not clear (indeed, it is deliberately mysterious) how the works are created. In part, too, because the staining and surfaces seem so familiar and ordinary, the sort of thing found underfoot each day. Then they begin to trace moments or materials which might contain a threat or at least repugnance. The material and the references suggest peripheries: what we might ignore underfoot or take as read in the news because it’s always there. Ramsay uses a technique of careful preservation and gentle insistence to bringing the marks and the implications home to us with a sophistication that derives from how much she holds back. 1. Codex Ashburnham 144 (Gill Hedley, 2009, www.axisweb.org) These works are part of a tradition of artists who push the material and conceptual possibilities of the medium of paint and whose work blurs the boundary between painting and sculpture. I use a process to lift pigment and texture from surfaces in the built environment, transforming and re-presenting slices of our everyday surroundings. These works capture the history and politics imbued in our built environments and draw attention to aspects of our environments that are often overlooked, altering perceptions of the spaces that we inhabit. My recent series of works entitled Wailing Walls respond to wars taking place around the world, in particular to the universal theme of the civilian cost of war or 'collateral damage'. From a distance these works appear to be intricate abstract paintings. Anomalies draw the viewer in closer, to discover that these are not paintings but are made from an ambiguous, skin like material that contains elements of the world around us; architectural markings, footprints, stains and detritus. The beauty of the work and the mystery of how and from what the work is made entice the viewer still closer, to discover unnerving narratives. The Wailing Walls pieces were made by lifting the surface of other artist's floors and walls, capturing residues of their creative processes. This form of detached mark making both celebrates and subverts the expression and physicality of painting, being found gesture painting or ready-made abstract expressionism. In these works the lifted surfaces are altered as little as possible in a 'truth to found materials' that emphasizes the expressions and composition evident in the materials in their natural state. These works consider the tendency to perceive recognisable imagery in abstract marks. Areas of floor are selected based on the expressive and compositional quality of the marks and a relationship between the marks and issues I wish to highlight. There is an intended tension between the aesthetics and the politics in these works, with politics appearing in an unexpected context. Selected for a London Group prize by Albert Irvin, 2009 The London Group, Menier Gallery, London, 2009 Creativity in Conflict, in association with Mishcon de Reya, Imagination Gallery, London 2009 Selected as an ‘MAstar’ by Gill Hedley for www.axisweb.org, 2009 Catch my Drift, The Bargehouse, Oxo Tower, London, 2009 Batteries Not Included: Mind as Machine, Shrewsbury Museum, 2007 An Anarchic Salon curated by Michael H. Shamberg, Slade Research Centre, London, 2007 The Fit curated by Michael H.Shamberg, Nuans Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2007 QUALIFICATIONS: MA Fine Art Central Saint Martin’s College of Art, London BA (Hons) Degree Fine Art Chelsea College of Art, London |
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Maya Ramsay