Concept Note

Celebrating is the acceptance of life in a constantly increasing awareness of its preciousness.

Henry Nouwen

Ceremonies and celebrations mark endings as well as beginnings. They are thresholds, a bringing about of a new world by living as if it already exists. I am celebrating the tenth anniversary of my first solo exhibition in London by gifting hundreds of paintings I've made over the last decade. This event, called Izipho, will take place on Sunday 7th September, and friends will be invited to my studio to freely select artworks for themselves and for others. I mean "friends" in the broadest and warmest sense possible.

 "you are gifted or talented"   “you have been given”.

This concept comes from my belief that art is a gift in itself — something that has flowed through me rather than something I have deserved — and that it likewise can be unconditionally shared. I've experienced these paintings as coming through me, not necessarily as something I've earned. Painting is an ecstatic experience for me, and each painting is a revelation of what it feels like to be really free and fully alive, to dance in and with cosmic energy. Rarely do I go to the studio with an exact picture of what I want to make. More often, I go there to be at the mercy of and in service to what must come out.I don't know that I've consciously been working towards giving these paintings away in the last few years, but gifting them feels like the most natural fruit of the tree of a free type of making. 

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you"

Thomas, 70

When I was last in Zimbabwe, I had the opportunity to really think about what art is really for and where its power comes from. I realised that there I had begun to think about the role of artefacts in ritual and in ceremony and in conferring sovereignty. So, my art is a source for my dreaming and imagination, and a form of consolation, a balm of recognition of the intensely raw experience of being alive. My art is also an experience of beauty, both the power of the sublime and how it feels to experience beauty pour out of you and also to witness it and be the first audience to the finished artwork and complete it with a response.

We must be prepared to consider the scandalous possibility that wherever the visionary imagination grows bright, magic, that old antagonist of science, renews itself, transmuting our workaday reality into something bigger, perhaps more frightening, certainly more adventurous than the lesser rationality of objective consciousness can ever countenance.

-Theodore Roszak

My art is that recognition of the divinity that is alive in all of us and in all things. It is from a sense of unity with this divine spark that I think my experience of freedom and the vastness and expanse of it comes from. It is also from this experience that my sense of being one with said expanse comes from. My artworks are therefore not limited to artefacts but are prayers, the portals to different worlds, into a different way of existing. 

May God bless you with discomfort,

at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships

so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger

at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,

so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears,

to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,

so that you may reach out your hand

to comfort them and to turn their pain to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness

to believe that you can make a difference in the world,

so that you can do what others claim cannot be done,

to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

Amen

We are living through desperate times of conflict, isolation, military extractivism and climate devastation. I wish I could give something more pragmatic to ease the suffering we daily witness. These are my most precious possessions; they are all I have to give. I want to live in a world in which it is possible for us to share, for our encounter to be as friends and as equals. 

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:21

For those who have bought my paintings in the past and those who will do so in the future, I can offer the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, which has helped me as I have been thinking about this gifting.

"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.

He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

 "About nine in the morning, he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.

He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.'

So they went.

"He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing.

 About five in the afternoon, he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'

 "Because no one has hired us, they answered. "He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'.

"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'

"The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius.

So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius.

When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.

'These who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'

"But he answered one of them, 'I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius?

Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you.

Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'

"So the last will be first, and the first will be last."

Matthew 20:1-16

I recently listened to Justin Scott's polemic on 'irrelevism', and it got me thinking about what this might mean for artists. I began to think about what would happen if the museum as we know it no longer existed. This is an exercise in irrelevism: practising a decentralised way of being an artist. It's exciting as a non-violent direct action means of resistance, but also a means of building. I began to wonder if it would be possible for my community to be my archive. I'm intrigued by what happens to us when we are in the posture of recipients. I will be receiving your generous care of these paintings.I want to explore what happens when both giver and recipient are freed from transactional expectations — when value comes from abundance, generosity, and shared meaning. I hope this will encourage others to take risks and re-imagine their own relationships to giving, receiving, and ownership. I hope we tell a different story about who we are to each other.

Only when they leave their future open can they prevent disappointments and receive the results of their mutual relationship as a gift.

Henry Nouwen

This gift-away is a way of living in trust and risk. It is frightening to make myself, and the work of my love and life, vulnerable to you but there seems to be a power in this ability to give what I love to who I want. It is in giving that we receive. Who will I become, and who will you become by receiving, and who will we become from this encounter?

a spilling of possessions.

I have been chewing on Ndebele phrases as I think about this process. The first is about how inheritance is distributed, 'ukucitha impahla', a spilling of possessions. I like this idea that it's a bit messy; spillage suggests an unboundaried way of giving without real structure. So in this process, I will keep that idea in mind and heart. The type of giving we do when we can no longer expect to benefit from our giving and the slightly messy nature of the spillage really makes sense with my paintings. There is a sense of pouring out.

Perhaps this is a good point to say that this is not me spiraling or crashing out; I've been discussing this concept for a while. I can also assure you that I'm not joining a convent or monastery. I haven't received a life-changing diagnosis, nor have I come into or expect to come into a life-altering financial windfall. I'm making this choice out of the same instinct that got me painting in the first place. I'm making this choice both in complete freedom and risk. There is no obvious safety net that I expect to land in from gifting all my paintings. Insofar as I ever think of my legacy, I realise that no monument lasts forever, and yet we, our souls and the love we give are eternal. My father's tombstone was stolen, and even as I plan on replacing it, I realise how ephemeral our footprints are. I hope this further validates these gifts as tokens of love freely given.

may you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire

that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

may you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease

to discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

may the forms of your belonging - in love, creativity, and friendship -

be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

John O'Donohue

The way I envisage this gifting will start with various community groups, local and small, where the organisations, the people who work for them, and the people they serve will be invited to collect a painting for themselves and for others. Then my community of artists, friends, art handlers, curators, everyone I have worked with, who has bought paintings before and been inspired by, will have their opportunity to collect something. Then whoever is reading this and is curious will have a chance, too.

In whom or what do you trust/rely/trust/depend?

What could I possibly rely on faced with unprecedented uncertainty? So far in my life, I've also experienced immense and unearned generosity and care and love. I'm able to give because I trust in that even as our world falls apart. 

I trust in us.

I trust you.