An Artist's Statement by Mike Bayne
on the exhibition Oil Paintings by Robert Ayre
I started out thinking I would write an artist's statement about the difference between mechanical and abstract thought. Then I thought I would write something, a comment, on Werner Herzog's idea that his movies are a metaphor for something but he doesn't know what. Then I moved on to something about identity, cultural or artistic or national, and I thought I would tie that in with an age of economic uncertainty and possible collapse. That seemed too broad for two hundred and fifty words though – the acceptable length according to artist statement conventions (I looked it up on Wikipedia – it's supposed to be a manifesto of sorts too) – so I decided to focus on identity transformations. I was going to write about forming the belief, as a group, that we aren't what we thought we were and tie that in with the title of the show (the name of another artist that I know very little about). Then I thought about something to do with work and how artists are one of the last professions to be paid according to their productivity in contrast to most other jobs, from lawyers to plumbers, who are paid a wage. I thought this would be a good jumping off point to talk about work more generally and high-end manufacturing. Another idea was to write about the history of banality in painting from Canaletto to Courbet and Manet and onto Morandi. I also wanted to talk about Jeff Wall versus Berndt and Hilla Becher and my preference for documentary or journalistic photography.
All of that is to say that I didn't have a specific focus or clear stream of thought while painting these works. But it's probably appropriate insomuch that it's representative of my support for uncertainty, doubt and the acceptance of ignorance. And hopefully provides some insight into what I was thinking, at times, while painting … and is more interesting than saying, 'I don't know'. |
