A few months ago I picked up a copy of Jonathan Michael Ray's book, UBI.UMBRA.CADIT recently published by Antler Press, down at the Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens in Penzance. Having never encountered his work before, it was a wonderful insight into his artistic practice, engaging sculpture, photography, found objects and the surrounding landscape. His engagement with religious iconography through rearranged stained glass windows and gold lettering carved into stone really reverberated with some of the themes that I've recently been exploring in my own work.
Considerations such as religion can be extremely loaded for some, but thing aspect which I found most intriguing was his willingness to use these mediums for artistic expression. That's not to deny that any of the previous iterations of these objects (or those that inspired them) weren't artistic, yet they were crafted for a specific purpose, their intention was for something with a great longevity, a symbolism that can be affirmed or denied, but as an object, something that feels like it should be maintained, preserved and kept, forever. Windows open to black and white sea views, boulders are cracked open to reveal their inscribed poetic interior. Shelves are adorned with items that speak of the natural, sublime and spiritual, so many of which appear to be found or collected, yet so intentionally placed that you can't help but sense they were born to be together.
The weight of these objects is what makes their permanence feel so at odds with their reinvented state. The physicality of the stone and spiritual meaning of the windows make us presume that they are untouchable, to remain in their given state forevermore. Jonathan's reworkings along this theme allow us to see the symbolism in a new light, they have been reframed, altered aesthetically, abstractions of a previous state (whether perceived or actual). It requires us to reassess the versions that we hold in our mind as something that may have been permanent.
Jonathan's work asks us what we perceive as permanent, what are the things that we are propped upon that will not remain?
We affirm ourselves with a sense of control, a misguided idea that once things are as we want them, they will remain like that. It is not wrong to consider what we are building, creating and offering to future generations, we can dream to create for them more than we had for ourselves, but the transitions of life continues, the flux, the grey areas, the questioning.
This article is taken from my July Mailout which also features some of my latest news and cultural highlights.
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