A conversation between Madeleine Strindberg and Peter Seddon, Director of APPRI.
PS. Madeleine, first of all congratulations on your research leave and its results.
The series of paintings, vitrines of photographs and documentation accompanying them, grew from your interest in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Now, this is a difficult history as we all know going back to the end of the Second World War and even before that to the Balfour declaration. Perhaps you could tell us how you came to this particular subject to explore in your work.
MS. My interest as an artist in this subject is twofold. For some time now my work has been interwoven with my interest in politics. In 2004 I produced a show entitled Among the Believers, which focused on the invasion/war in Iraq and its aftermath.
With the unexpected discovery of a close relation living in Israel in 2006, my (geographical) focus shifted to Israel. And very soon what
began as an investigation of a previously unknown family link in Israel, developed into a visual exploration of the current politics and the difficult history of Israel/Palestine. Although I have subsequently read a great deal about Israel/Palestine, my knowledge is primarily based on my time staying at the place and talking to people, born from a natural curiosity about people’s lives and why there are where they are, not from reading scholarly books.
PS. So the measure of this project, if one can put it like this, is not only the historical, but the highly personal as well, tracking down a forgotten history, as well as a public one. It seems to me that the materials themselves expose this, perhaps. You have for example the direct appearance of the place through photography or direct witnessing by yourself and the people you spoke to which can be contrasted with the worked surfaces of the paintings themselves, with their own material specificity. In what ways do these match that division between public and private histories, how do they relate to each other?
MS. Right from the outset of my project I realized I did not want the work to be didactic. I wanted to make work that was shaped from my own experience in the area and not be literal or predictable. The group of works I am presenting in this show are based on 2 explorative journeys to Israel/Palestine undertaken within the last 12 months, which fed me with images and source material for the project. There is no generic formula to the work. Each piece sets up its own rules and tells a different story. The focus of the work is on the architecture of the occupation, of people’s lives within it and the brokenness of their bodies. Some of the paintings are based on the photographs I took while travelling, others on memory and notes I made. These are not paintings about Israel/Palestine but imaginative depictions of places locked into a hopeless situation: spaces ruined by politics.
PS. So can the particular space of painting itself be ruined by politics, as some
might claim, or can the politics of painting’s surface be rescued for another site,
another meaning contained within but beyond paint itself?
MS. Ok, the title of the Cappe Conference was ‘Space and Politics’, and when I said ‘spaces ruined by their politics’ it was partly referring back to the title of the conference, but more importantly I was also referring to my experience in the occupied Territories. Hebron for instance, was a beautiful ancient thriving market town, world famous for its gold market. All that has gone: the shops are locked up, the market is impoverished and provisionally protected by bits of wire netting as sewage quite often gets thrown onto their streets - possibly the bleakest place I have ever seen in my life. Equally I could have referred to the Separation Wall, snaking its way through the Promised Land.
The political situation in Israel/Palestine is vastly complicated and it is not my place to make any judgement. It is also difficult to relate this hugely complicated political situation to one particular painting. The politics of the space is the subject of the entire show and central to all the work shown and the exhibition needs to be understood as an installation, which all interlocks. The photographs document a reality. The paintings (hopefully) convey an experience. For example: ’Jerusalem’, the big yellow painting in the foyer is deliberately seductive almost 'pretty', but when you look closer you see the incongruous spaces, cages, surveillance cameras etc. Crossing outside the Sally's Benny theatre is quite deliberately and ironically hung on its partition wall, between Gallery and the Theatre, depicts a segment of the wall, a checkpoint. Painted all with a black colour, it is a symbol of undeniable authority, that of the State, and the control it holds.
When I initially was offered the show to run parallel to the conference, the problem arose that all the gallery space had been pre-booked. It did however occur to me that making a show about two peoples locked in conflict over land, in a gallery with no space to show it, was quite appropriate. Presenting my work in 3 unrelated and unexpected venues in the building therefore became a crucial feature of the show.
So the triptych Over There was quite happily hanging in the canteen with a big yellow watchtower in the middle section. It’s kind of unreal, emerging from washes of cascading runny paint, maybe just as unreal as the proposition of having a land, which is then ruined by its politics. The title relates to my travelling experience in the country and alludes to the ambiguity of the situation. Where ever you go there is always an ’over there’. To the left of the tower is Gaza, the place I could never reach, (I did try but was refused entry in Ashkalon before then heading further north), and to the right there is ‘Sachle’, a wonderful place, a bit like how I imagine paradise, where I spent some of the happiest days of my visit. Maybe that’s where the ‘personal’, which you mentioned earlier, creeps into the show. ‘Two Suns’, a larger painting was hanging separately. More a drawing than painting, it shows the image of a truncated body, raw and naked, to be seen as one body, one land – rightfully owned by two peoples turning on itself, attacking itself with two knifes; Israel? – Palestine?
However, I have to say at this point, this show is in no way conclusive.
PS. Madeleine, first of all congratulations on your research leave and its results.
The series of paintings, vitrines of photographs and documentation accompanying them, grew from your interest in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Now, this is a difficult history as we all know going back to the end of the Second World War and even before that to the Balfour declaration. Perhaps you could tell us how you came to this particular subject to explore in your work.
MS. My interest as an artist in this subject is twofold. For some time now my work has been interwoven with my interest in politics. In 2004 I produced a show entitled Among the Believers, which focused on the invasion/war in Iraq and its aftermath.
With the unexpected discovery of a close relation living in Israel in 2006, my (geographical) focus shifted to Israel. And very soon what
began as an investigation of a previously unknown family link in Israel, developed into a visual exploration of the current politics and the difficult history of Israel/Palestine. Although I have subsequently read a great deal about Israel/Palestine, my knowledge is primarily based on my time staying at the place and talking to people, born from a natural curiosity about people’s lives and why there are where they are, not from reading scholarly books.
PS. So the measure of this project, if one can put it like this, is not only the historical, but the highly personal as well, tracking down a forgotten history, as well as a public one. It seems to me that the materials themselves expose this, perhaps. You have for example the direct appearance of the place through photography or direct witnessing by yourself and the people you spoke to which can be contrasted with the worked surfaces of the paintings themselves, with their own material specificity. In what ways do these match that division between public and private histories, how do they relate to each other?
MS. Right from the outset of my project I realized I did not want the work to be didactic. I wanted to make work that was shaped from my own experience in the area and not be literal or predictable. The group of works I am presenting in this show are based on 2 explorative journeys to Israel/Palestine undertaken within the last 12 months, which fed me with images and source material for the project. There is no generic formula to the work. Each piece sets up its own rules and tells a different story. The focus of the work is on the architecture of the occupation, of people’s lives within it and the brokenness of their bodies. Some of the paintings are based on the photographs I took while travelling, others on memory and notes I made. These are not paintings about Israel/Palestine but imaginative depictions of places locked into a hopeless situation: spaces ruined by politics.
PS. So can the particular space of painting itself be ruined by politics, as some
might claim, or can the politics of painting’s surface be rescued for another site,
another meaning contained within but beyond paint itself?
MS. Ok, the title of the Cappe Conference was ‘Space and Politics’, and when I said ‘spaces ruined by their politics’ it was partly referring back to the title of the conference, but more importantly I was also referring to my experience in the occupied Territories. Hebron for instance, was a beautiful ancient thriving market town, world famous for its gold market. All that has gone: the shops are locked up, the market is impoverished and provisionally protected by bits of wire netting as sewage quite often gets thrown onto their streets - possibly the bleakest place I have ever seen in my life. Equally I could have referred to the Separation Wall, snaking its way through the Promised Land.
The political situation in Israel/Palestine is vastly complicated and it is not my place to make any judgement. It is also difficult to relate this hugely complicated political situation to one particular painting. The politics of the space is the subject of the entire show and central to all the work shown and the exhibition needs to be understood as an installation, which all interlocks. The photographs document a reality. The paintings (hopefully) convey an experience. For example: ’Jerusalem’, the big yellow painting in the foyer is deliberately seductive almost 'pretty', but when you look closer you see the incongruous spaces, cages, surveillance cameras etc. Crossing outside the Sally's Benny theatre is quite deliberately and ironically hung on its partition wall, between Gallery and the Theatre, depicts a segment of the wall, a checkpoint. Painted all with a black colour, it is a symbol of undeniable authority, that of the State, and the control it holds.
When I initially was offered the show to run parallel to the conference, the problem arose that all the gallery space had been pre-booked. It did however occur to me that making a show about two peoples locked in conflict over land, in a gallery with no space to show it, was quite appropriate. Presenting my work in 3 unrelated and unexpected venues in the building therefore became a crucial feature of the show.
So the triptych Over There was quite happily hanging in the canteen with a big yellow watchtower in the middle section. It’s kind of unreal, emerging from washes of cascading runny paint, maybe just as unreal as the proposition of having a land, which is then ruined by its politics. The title relates to my travelling experience in the country and alludes to the ambiguity of the situation. Where ever you go there is always an ’over there’. To the left of the tower is Gaza, the place I could never reach, (I did try but was refused entry in Ashkalon before then heading further north), and to the right there is ‘Sachle’, a wonderful place, a bit like how I imagine paradise, where I spent some of the happiest days of my visit. Maybe that’s where the ‘personal’, which you mentioned earlier, creeps into the show. ‘Two Suns’, a larger painting was hanging separately. More a drawing than painting, it shows the image of a truncated body, raw and naked, to be seen as one body, one land – rightfully owned by two peoples turning on itself, attacking itself with two knifes; Israel? – Palestine?
However, I have to say at this point, this show is in no way conclusive.