thedisgraceofgod: Yazan Halwani, Beirut graffiti virtuoso, detained ...

thedisgraceofgod: Yazan Halwani, Beirut graffiti virtuoso, detained ...: [Originally posted at NOW ] It hasn’t been an easy few weeks for Yazan Halwani, the artist who has, at the astonishing age of just 20, dist...

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finding the way forward

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The mid session review is a great way to crystalize ideas and sort out where I am in my work. On one side of my studio 'booth' I had displayed digital images from Chania reworked on aluminium and transfer sheets beside a large painting of a Chania wall where I was experimenting with layering oil paint over acrylic. I want to experiment with the idea of mixing up digital imagery with paintings:  On the other side I had a large mixed media painting of a Guanche cave wall alongside sketches of cave art: and the 'otro mundo es posible ' photobook: After very useful discussions with Gordon Brennan and Joan Smith, my next step is to bring the key elements together in my work - graffiti/cave art, posters/layers. Gordon suggested I should introduce a motif, and as it happens I already have one, with my collection of Guanche symbol graffiti. This 'Guanche icon' could be added to my work after installation. Meanwhile, Alex Rowell has been bac...
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Tapies on Walls

Antoni Tapies describes the walls in his paintings as 'fundamentally a form of artistic organization.' (Tapies, 1970). He traces the source of his awareness of walls and their evocative power to his adolescence spent mainly shut in within walls during the Spanish Civil War, and recognises that his early works of 1945 'have an air of street graffiti and of an entire world of protest - repressed, clandestine, but also full of life.' (Tapies, 1970) 'How many suggestions can be derived from the image of the wall and all its possible permutations! Separation, cloistering, the wailing wall, prison, witness to the passing of time: smooth surfaces, serene and white; tortured surfaces, old and decrepit; signs of human imprints, objects, natural elements; a sense of struggle, of effort; of destruction, cataclysm; or of construction, reemergence, equilibrium; traces of love, pain, disgust, disorder; the romantic prestige of ruins; the contribution of organic elements, forms...
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The Guanche Connection

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I have found myself delving into the aboriginal beginnings in the Canary Islands and have made some significant discoveries. The original inhabitants of the islands were Guanches, who are thought to come from the Berber tribe in North Africa. This tribe were reputed to be very tall, with blond hair and blue eyes, a description which also fits the Grooved Ware folk from Orkney who I believe could be one and the same. The graffiti that I spent much time photographing around the island turns out to be a Guanche motif. There is a  neolithic settlement on Lanzarote called Zonzamas which seems to have striking similarities to Skara Brae in Orkney, although it is very hard to find and not promoted much as a visitor attraction. In fact, I had great difficulty in locating it on the island. During the Spanish Inquisition anyone of Guanche origin was hunted out and put to death, so many islanders denied their Guanche history from that time onwards and it still seems to be rather a taboo ...
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