CEE for exhibition "Ilhas 2020 - Isolation"

Gestating during three months of personal home lockdown, and without access to the usual range of artistic resources, a small number of assemblages emerged asking for life, from the jumble of ignored and discarded objects lying at the back of drawers.

Thus we have a small number of modal statements from minimalist assemblages that create an avenue of increasing/accumulating complexity, comprising of a symbiosis of objects and materials, thematically linked by both the selection of materials and use of limited colour, which seem to exude polemic as well as religious overtones.

The assembler Cee has limited the choice of colours to deliberately cross-reference the Red Cross, Death, the world of medicine, but also the form of English nationalism ultimately behind the political movement known as Brexit the assembler regards as the death of a nation… the narrative of an autopsy of a murder camouflaged by a pandemic is achieved with minimal fuss and form.

The incorporation of the accidental was encouraged. The result is an installation of 8 art works forming the Temple of Detritus.

One first encounters the obvious in miniature – the narrative of In MemoriAm (5) is simply the burial of Truth in terms both chic and traditional, and the transcendence of Lies from a post-truth… the sphere is flat-lined.

IN MEMORIAM

Assemblage, mixed medium including suede leather, wood, oil paint, sheepskin, copper pins.

Bears inscription “Lies” and “Truth”

SIZE: 30cm diameter overall. Unique.

PRICE: 190 euros +IVA

Chalice-Disarmed (3) is a fragile testament to a hidden political agenda and the use of symbols to beguile, it carries its message using a frugality of form.

CHALICE – DISARMED

Assemblage includes Royal Navy “Commission” pennant, glass, sheepskin, taxidermy needles

Bears inscription IN VARIETATE CONCORDIA (official motto of EU), hidden within the glass.

SIZE: variable depending on display. Unique.

PRICE: 190 euros +IVA

Gilead´s Handmaiden (4) uses a direct literary reference to exploit the nihilism behind survival, as a non-augmented reflex…

GILEAD´S HANDMAIDEN

Votive statue, mixed medium including stainless steel, incontinence pads, medical masks, glass and sheepskin

Carries inscription SACRIFICIUM SENUM( Sacrifice of the Aged)

SIZE: 35cm h x 26cm x 26cm . Unique.

PRICE: 90 euros +IVA

Odysseus – Stunted (2), viewed through the lens of tranquilities, on the other hand, deliberately subversively references a known myth to create a moment of “what if…?” when the choice of knowing something through experience without danger to self is deranged by the refusal to exploit one´s own inner `sirens´.

ODYSSEUS – STUNTED

Assemblage includes driftwood, an antique fish spear, museum copy miniature, sheepskin

SIZE: 50cm w x 50cm h x 20cm d. Unique.

SOLD

The culmination is:

Detritus´Gift (1) references through its planes of modality fetishist objects, primitive ritual, and surrealist symbols, inventing a belief system invoking protection from that which itself threatens. Self-emollition of Belief in the face of reverberating denials which, seemingly so, encourages in the viewer sensory responses whilst simultaneously in the tones of a lisping baroque warns against an approach.

DETRITUS´GIFT

A votive statuette , mixed medium including iron, wood, oil paint, leather, stainless steel, sea coral, and vegetable & taxidermy (porcupine quill, mummified bat). Unique.

Carries inscription VERITAS TE DEFENDERE (Defend Yourself)

SIZE: 87cm h x 57cm d x 44 cm w (plus loose attachments). Unique.

(Please Note: giltwood mirror is not included but for display purposes only.)

PRICE: 950 euros +IVA

But, guarding this spatial threshold we meet Fleeced (6), a three-dimensional totemic visual pun on the myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece, post-theft. (In the ancient classical Greek myth the golden fleece, ( chrysómallo déras) of the winged ram Chrysomalos, at Colchis is stolen by Jason and his Argonauts - a quest undertaken by order of King Pelias to gain Jason the throne of Iolcus in Thessaly.) The fleece is thus a symbol of authority and kingship. In colloquial English the verb to fleece means to rob or steal. As an English noun fleece means the skin/pelt of a sheep. The assemblage shows us the painted naked skull bearing the mark of Helios, and a hanger/hook shaped like the symbol for Aries, but bereft of its luxurious pelt. All power is based on theft –the theft of personal freedoms, of material possessions, of identity…

FLEECED

Assemblage, utilizing items found at a local communal refuse point, mixed medium including taxidermy (skull), chrome steel, scagiola, gilt bronze

SIZE: 200cm h x 80cm diameter max. Unique.

PRICE: 900 euros +IVA

Hanging above the installation is The Chaffing Yoke (8), which draws on the ancient Roman ritual of humiliation (passum sub iugam) where defeated foes and captives walked under a yoke in supplication. This version bears a line from the poem Invictus by W.E.Henley on its reverse side,” Bloody, but unbowed” carved as graffiti in an act of defiance.

THE CHAFFING YOKE

Assemblage, mixed medium including taxidermy animal horn, sheepskin, forged metal, urze,

SIZE: yoke - 140cm wide x 10 cm max diam. Unique

Chain - 80 cm long

PRICE: 400 euros +IVA

The Sanguine Compass (7) is a whimsical visual metaphor referencing the necessity to regard one´s own inner moral compass when navigating troubled times – through its lens lies a miniature naif landscape using the symbolic colours of Truth (blue) and Hope (green). Sanguine´s other meaning in English is blood red, and seeing red is common parlance for very angry. Anger seems to be a common default emotion in the current crisis. The compass, in its masked cradle indicates the direction where, unfailingly, Truth lies, and due east is seen eternal Hope Alas, its position in the exhibition is wayward …

THE SANGUINE COMPASS

Assemblage, mixed medium including brass & other metals, sheepskin, oils.

SIZE: 155cm h x 48cm diameter max. Unique.

PRICE: 650 euros +IVA

reserved