Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury 2000
To promote and accompany my exhibition at the museum a poster/catalogue was produced. In that I wrote a brief introduction which I illustrated with photographs, some taken in the small town outside London where I lived at the time. Apart from this, a second summary of my show was written a day after the opening by one of the curators, a young lady called Juliet (no last name) based on an interview she did with me in the garden outside the museum. It was addressed and sent out to all staff, but I guess was mostly helpful to the people who looked after the exhibition and took questions from visitors. At the time I think it covered most of what I had to say about the individual pieces, but with hindsight I believe it also offers a sense of the narrative, that in my eyes joined the many parts together:
To All Museum staff from Juliet:
After speaking with Anders in detail, I thought it would be beneficial if I passed on his own explanation of the exhibition. There are many underlying themes to this exhibition and Anders has used different methods of creating art to interpret these themes.
One of the themes is the relationship between children and adults and how we stereotypically associate certain things with being an adult and being a child.
Another is related to where we live and how this can shape and influence us, both as children and adults.
Another is taking a point of fantasy from either adults or children and then developing that fantasy into some kind of story. Most of the collages around the walls have internal links and are based on dreams and fantasies.
Sometimes it is just as simple as his interest in packaging and labels and how one can draw ideas from that. E.g. The Pretty Cow painting in the Harding Room was originally based on the cheese packaging (Dairylee) that depicts a cow. This can be seen in the painting.
In general it is about moving from one state of being to another, about building something from nothing and then developing it. About taking something innocent and giving it meaning – going from a child into an adult.
To understand all of this further, I have outlined some examples, room by room.
In the Harding Room:
Puberty (situated on the big plinth): The items represent things that belong to both children and adults. It suggests stereotypical items that one might associate with both states of being e.g. toy bunnies and toy aeroplanes are often associated with being a child and gardening equipment may be seen as an item belonging to an adult. The concept of puberty, Anders feels, is captured with the can of lager and the bottle of beer (also found in the display cabinets entitled The Beautiful Game No’s I & II). When his two sons began to start going out and first tried drinking and parties, he felt they were becoming adults.
A Season of Choice (situated on the smaller plinth): This represents the four seasons by using the same fruit and vegetables but cast in four colours. His point is that we are now able to purchase the “four seasons” at all times throughout the year.
Brownsite (on the floor): This is about development, residue and reclaiming.
To Anders, it evokes the feeling of reclaiming the residue of what is left behind when development takes place.
A Pretty Cow (painting): This is based on the interest Anders has with packaging and how he develops it into a painting.
Traces (Jam Jars and Biscuit Tins): (paintings): Both these are about tracing objects and what shapes are left behind when the objects are removed.
Collages: these mostly contain photographs of Anders’ two sons. They are all about childhood dreams and having to let go of these when you become an adult.
In the Raison Room:
Greenfield: (the floor installation): This is about development and the ability we have to build something from nothing. It is also about living in suburbia – a place where town meets country.
A Corridor and Four Empty Rooms (painting): this is about seeing things from above, seeing things from another angle. It suggests and evokes the idea of architectural emptiness. As Anders put it “when you have a newly decorated room with no furniture in it, it is exciting and feels empty at the same time”.
Playground (painting): this is also a view from above. To Anders these shapes and colours suggest a playground as seen from above.
A Tiny Difference (painting): this is just about the way smells drift around in the wind. He wanted to depict the smell of fresh linen on his washing line.
Sealords: (painting): The two people in this painting are Anders’ son and father. To him it represents how he feels about both of them. It suggests more stereotypical concepts of how we should feel about our relationships with our parents and our children. Do we forget that they are just normal people growing up or getting older?
In the Viney Room:
A Scent of Oranges and Cherries (floor installation): this is about the smells and sensations of boxes of fruit. Anders collected these fruit boxes from markets where he had been enticed into by the smell. He is also interested once again, in the labelling and chooses to leave some of this showing.
Spring Rhythm and Autumn Tunes (painting): this is about things coming and going, about having two seasons in one go.
Early Learning (all the other pieces in this room apart from the collages): this is supposed to be a paraphrase of modernist painting. It is Anders re-working the idea that most modernist painters believed that their avant garde ideas were original and not influenced from what had preceded them. Hence the title Early Learning – starting from scratch with basic colours and shapes.
Anders has also used repetition and internal links within the exhibition. E.g. there are wax models of shredded wheat in Puberty and real shredded wheat can be found in the boxes in Greenfield.
Also there are many references to childhood all over the exhibition. There are wax models of bunnies in Puberty and they are depicted again in Tapestry, the painting by the model. Anders painted rabbits as a representation of fertility, I have decided to leave that explanation out of the children’s sheet!!