Exhibition: Coach House Coffee Shop, October 2010
This exhibition, perhaps better described as an installation, is the product of my ideas through an exploration of flags, their uses and meanings.
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It is a work in progress, which is why there is such a variety of media and I am very interested in feedback, not just about the work, but about your own feelings about flags and what they represent.
One of my inspirations has been Jasper Johns, the American artist famous for his paintings of the American flag. The ambiguity in the painting of a flag led art critic, Robert Rosenblum to ask: ‘Is it blasphemous or respectful, simple-minded or recondite?’
By capturing a flag in an image, it is freezing it, preventing it from doing what it is supposed to do: fly. The image is not a flag, but a monument to a flag.
In my own work I have framed my images of flags. It is a physical device to enclose the work, reflecting formal tradition, but it can also be seen as a metaphor for borders or partitions. This is in stark contrast to the ‘real’ flags hanging in the space.
Another artist who has inspired me is Yukinori Yanagi who lives and works in Japan and the USA. I would urge you to look up his ‘World Flag Ant Farm’ on the internet. I have tentatively included ants in a couple of works. Ants are commonly described as an army, with all the military connotations that go with it. They symbolize work, order and collective activity. But, as Yanagi says: ‘If the travels of the ant show us anything, it is that he wanders to resume the task he has been programmed to perform, not to acquire freedom.’ The juxtaposition of ants with flags is therefore an interesting one.
Due to the symbolic and political nature of flags, many countries have laws governing how and when they may be flown.
In the UK notwithstanding we have no specific law preventing the flying of the Union Jack, we are not generally used to seeing the Union Jack in England, unlike the cross of St. George which is displayed everywhere from pubs to churches. So I was surprised on a recent visit to Northern Ireland to see the Union Jack flying everywhere – makeshift flagpoles attached to lampposts and telegraph poles, even one in the middle of a lake. I was told that they had not yet been taken down after Orangemen’s Day on July 12th.
I have deliberately chosen old frames for some of the pieces to imbue the sense of history each piece evokes. I have also used different materials to give different meanings to the works. The large textile flag could be made from an old uniform, the torn white strips representing bandages for those wounded on the battlefield signifying the great sacrifices that have been made to retain what the flag represents.
In the flags I-IV series I was inspired by the new design on our currency by Matthew Dent, which is fragmented, and I also wanted to convey that the United Kingdom has not always been one nation.
The Tin photographs conjure up for me images of a family in hand-knitted sweaters huddling around a TV set to watch the Queen’s coronation, or pioneers in far flung corners of the empire.
The other ‘Tin Series’ i.e. Coke and Pepsi were made after I noticed that it states on the can ‘Made in GB’. It always used to be a selling point of those drinks that they were ‘all-American’.
My son said to me that flags have only two purposes: identity and communication. That may be true, but it is a complex identity and a very rich language that goes beyond simple semaphore. Take the image of a Union Jack draped over a coffin; a flag flying at half mast; the Olympic gold medalist wrapped in the flag of their country – flags may identify opposite sides in a battle, but they also unite nations with a common purpose.
‘Vexillology’ means the study of flags. If you happen to be on “Who wants to be a Millionaire” and it is the winning question, remember where you learned it!