Archive for May, 2008
A Letter From England
Posted by Rob | Filed under Uncategorized
Page 23 from the catalogue for To There & Back Again - Catching The Spaces In Between. To order your copy click here.
London, England, 2008
Dear America,
How do you do?
Since returning from the last trip to see you we’ve been busy catching the spaces back home.
it’s great to be here, and it’s been unexpectedly uplifting.We’ve taken time to explore and capture images from the city that’s been our home for the
past five years. Considering London is nearly 2000 years old, it still thinks of itself as an
unfinished canvas. Every time it starts to define itself, it begins to stretch its boundaries
again. It seems to constantly strive to improve its international reputation and diversity,
whether it’s people, food or the arts. it’s also keen to open up to other countries – since we
left, they reopened St. Pancras railway station, and we can now get to Paris by train in just
over two hours. That’s less than half the time it takes to get from Houston to Dallas.To be fair, things are a lot smaller and closer together here. The space is tightly packed,
so a lot of people walk or move around by bus and Underground. This is useful but can
be restrictive. When we first arrived back, we missed the sense of freedom we felt in the
United States, and were struck by the ill complexions of people in the ‘rat race’.We’ve also been spending quite a bit of time out of London, in the english countryside.
We should point out that London and the rest of England really are like separate countries.
Country folk can be very conservative and fearful of change. Funnily enough, it wasn’t
until studying the faces of Middle America that we’ve come to notice the faces of Middle
England. They can be pretty stuck in their ways, but sometimes that’s enchanting. We have
a friend who is 92 and he is still wearing a sweater he bought in 1937. It’s slightly worn at
the elbows, but he reckons it will get him through.The landscapes here are very subtle and quite hard to capture. it’s difficult to find a point of
focus; instead, there are lots of small details. It’s not like Big Bend or some of the canyons
in Arizona, which are awe-inspiring; the english countryside is soft and gentle, yet it seems
to nourish our hearts.From the striking architecture of London to less obvious english eccentricities, we hope
you enjoy the spaces that have been caught here in between.Cheerio,
Rob Pepper & Aimie Littler
The World Map
Posted by Rob | Filed under Uncategorized
Page 22 from the catalogue for To There & Back Again - Catching The Spaces In Between.
Goodbye America
Posted by Rob | Filed under Uncategorized
Page 21 from the catalogue for To There & Back Again - Catching The Spaces In Between.
Goodbye America, Pen & Ink On Paper, 20cm x 30cm
RP: This is the last drawing I did in America.
DCR: In your American pictures you’ve tended to focus much more on individual characters, whereas in the
London pictures there’s very little focus on the individual; it’s more the architecture of the city, the city as a
whole, a mass of people.
When The Cow Saw Me
Posted by Rob | Filed under To There & Back Again
Page 20 from the catalogue for To There & Back Again - Catching The Spaces In Between. To order your copy click here
Pen & Ink On Paper, 15cm x 21cm
RP: Meat is sold with every meal. I drove past battery-farmed cows, and it’s heartbreaking – it’s a mile long and it stinks, and you’re watching the cows in the desert, in scrubland, it’s 40 degrees outside and it’s like battery chickens but with cows, and it’s tragic…
DCR: I love the cow because aside from being a very good drawing, it’s a very tender drawing. Here is the 72 oz steak looking very tender and loving.RP: I was trying to humanise it a bit…and that was done with spittle. There’s something quite sculptural about it, it feels like it could be from clay, a rough material. For me the cow represents hope.
Big Bend
Posted by Rob | Filed under To There & Back Again
Page 19 from the catalogue for To There & Back Again - Catching The Spaces In Between. To order your copy click here
Pen & Ink On Paper, 40cm x 30cm
RP: The first time I drew Big Bend I did it with spittle. I wanted to muck it up a bit, so I used a bit of moisture and added it on.
DCR: One of my favourite Patrick Caulfield paintings is called Bend in the road, which is a very similar composition, just a road bending between two mountains.
Dallas City Limits
Posted by Rob | Filed under To There & Back Again
Page 18 from the catalogue for To There & Back Again - Catching The Spaces In Between. To order your copy click here
Pen & Ink On Paper, 40cm x 30cm
DCR: Going through the progression of drawings, Dallas City Limits appears very intense. it’s tight, it’s visually quite disorientating, and then you get Big Bend, and visually it’s almost like a release.
RP: Texas planning laws are strange; in some cities there are no restrictions, so you get huge urban sprawl. I wanted to put these drawings together to contrast the expanse of cities with that of natural land and openness.
Two Paths Diverged
Posted by Rob | Filed under To There & Back Again
Page 17 from the catalogue for To There & Back Again - Catching The Spaces In Between. To order your copy click here.
Oil & Gold Leaf On Canvas, 120cm x 90cm
DCR: Two Paths Diverged reminds me of Allan D’Arcangelo and his trademark American highways that trail off into nothingness in that very clean style. What intrigued me is your use of gold leaf, which I know you have used in your abstract paintings.
RP: Every time I use gold leaf, my intention is to highlight something from either a narrative or an aesthetic point of view. Here it was about the journey onwards on the railroad tracks. This drawing is of a railroad in Marfa, a little town three hours from Odessa in nowhere Texas. The place is like an artists’ folly – it’s where the Donald Judd Foundation is, and it has a permanent Andy Warhol exhibition and some Dalí pieces and, bizarrely, a Prada store in the middle of the desert.
Grandmother’s Flag
Posted by Rob | Filed under To There & Back Again
Page 16 from the catalogue for To There & Back Again - Catching The Spaces In Between. To order your copy click here.
Oil & Gold Leaf On Canvas, 120cm x 90cm
DCR: Obviously the flag is a slightly controversial and very evocative American symbol.
RP: I think the american flag has two meanings, depending on whether you’re american or not. For Americans, it’s about equality, justice, freedom and pride in your country, and for us, a flag tends to represent imperialism and staking claim to land.
DCR: It’s a cultural difference because one very rarely sees a flagpole of the Union Jack in a city garden here for example, and if you do, strange connotations immediately spring to mind about nationalism. But at first glance, if you’re unaware of the title, this drawing almost depicts what looks like a slightly sad, run-down house about to be overwhelmed by nature. The trees are beginning to encroach upon it, the flag has no wind in its sails. Is this somewhere you stayed?
RP: It belongs to the grandmother of a friend of mine, and she was very proud to be american and Texan. She was in her mid-80s, went to the gym every day and was just one of those cookie-cutter grandmothers living in a typical Texan town. a lot of the people that i stayed with showed great hospitality. in drawing the flag, I’m signalling the slight confusion i have about it, questioning how i see it.
DCR:: I find this image very appealing and evocative. even though I’ve never been there, I can imagine standing at the gate, someone sitting outside on a chair, grandma baking.
Black Hawks Down
Posted by Rob | Filed under To There & Back Again
Page 15 from the catalogue for To There & Back Again - Catching The Spaces In Between. To order your copy click here.
Pen & Ink On Paper, 30cm x 20cm
RP: As part of the military recognition there was a Black Hawk fly-by. Interestingly, they placed all the wars in the same context, but there’s a difference between them…
…I think Americans are a bit disillusioned. I went to Texas for the first time in 2005. going back in 2007, I noticed a change. You meet a lot of Republicans there, and their shine has been knocked off them a bit.
Texas A & M
Posted by Rob | Filed under To There & Back Again
Page 14 from the catalogue for To There & Back Again - Catching The Spaces In Between. To order your copy click here.
RP: 84000 people at a college football game. I love entering into the stadium, I love becoming part of that mass. I don’t really care who wins but I do like to be part of it…
…George Bush Senior was there as well. It was ‘military recognition’ night, so all of the veterans from different
wars were there, and they were being recognised during the game. A gulf War vet had a badge pinned onto him.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
DCR: That combination of military and sport is quite strange to us. You can’t imagine that happening here
just before a test match starts at Lords. It’s just not conceivable to us, and so it’s a very alien concept. But not in America; they parade their heroes. They are heroes, and it makes sense to them to celebrate that at mass events. You know, if you’ve 85,000 people watching a ball game, an awful lot of them will be veterans of one war or another…
