Residency 3, Day 11: 'Duchampian deflation stands not simply as a negation of the status of painting, but as an actual extension of the artist’s skills and competences.' - John Roberts

From Mike Stoakes about the work pictured here:

'... firstly I enjoyed it as a political image of land, ownership and shelter - the occupation of space in its socioeconomic aspect.. the photos are most eloquent about this being at the same time aesthetically pleasing as modulations of green (across image and text). if that seems to me to be the essential framework directly represented and embodied by images and objects as the work might be realised in an artworld context it's interesting to think how images in that arena are often connected in order to be valorised by their insertion into an artworld historical narrative which in some ways is impossible to escape from. in this case you could think of robert morris' comment that canvas should be left to awning and tent makers as well as tracy emin's tent. a tent full of balls reminds me of jasper johns' painting with two balls. however another aspect is the affective one of thinking of the sensation of lying on golf balls which brings to mind things like man ray's cadeau - an iron with nails - or meret oppenheim's furry teacup - even though your work is about dispossession of the space of shelter.'

Some matters I want to give attention to are:

1. Painterly approaches as applied to non-painting practices.
2. The question of skill and de-skilling, not forgetting one of my fave art books, John Robert's The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art after the Readymade https://www.amazon.com/Intangibilities-Form-Skill-Deskilling-Readymade/dp/1844671674
3. Pretentiousness again. I have discussed (with myself and in pubs and cafés) many times, but the word's lazy use to describe materials the person saying it simply does not 'get', still grates. And why would they expect to get it? Forgivable in someone new to the game.
4. Figuration, whatever that might mean.
5. Work or ideas, or the minds they emanated from, being referred to as 'mad' when they are not. The use is meant lightly at times, but think of the conscious derogatory depicting of Irish and Polish people as foolish or mad historically, {which had its origins I suspect, in the increased rebelliousness of the former, from the late eighteenth century onwards especially, and, in the case of the latter, that period of almost-democratic, or at least more enlightened, feudal order way back in Poland's history.}