Thom Puckey was born in Bexleyheath, Kent, in 1948, the same place as myself but a few decades prior, he’s an honorary Dutchman these days, having worked and taught in the Netherlands for many many years, but in essence he brings out the nostalgia I feel for a life I’ve never had. My parents married too young, and for me, if I’d had the choice I’d have much rather have been born to a generation earlier. As I grew up in Bromley it soon dawned on me that the ‘beautiful people’ had all left, including David Bowie, by the time I attended Dartford Grammar Mick Jagger was long gone. At a temporary job before college in a sawmill in Gravesend I heard numerous stories about Peter Blake from a former alcoholic pal of his. Kent, in fact England, was dead by the time I arrived, the creative people had left, the avenues open to them were closed to me, but I learned to live with it, it was a matter of survival, I consumed a pile of psychoactive drugs and missed a decade of dull and drab thinking, muted culture, forlorn aspiration and financial greed and obsession.
If there was such thing as a foetal time machine, I’d rather have been seeded by Puckey’s parents, though I somehow doubt I would have ever matched his talent for sculpture. Still the opportunities for creative advancement were everywhere then, money was not at the top of the list of priorities, it was possible to be creative and eat. It took quite a long time for Britain to turn full circle, tire of corporate iconography and manufactured pop and begin once again to tout the talent of a dispossessed generation. At college our tutors constantly informed us that we were ‘Thatcher’s Children’, the most fearful, depressed, repressed and conservative year to pass through the doors in decades. We’d had the stuffing knocked out of us long before we’d arrived, it was the British way, speak when you’re spoken to, earn your keep, keep your head down, behave.
It’s nice to see that Thom Puckey is still kicking ass, his work is both beautiful and abrasive, skilfully crafted yet highly obtuse, he’s spent so long sticking two fingers up at the establishment it’s become the norm now. His nudes adorned with military hardware are recognised around the world, but he’s created a wealth of other iconic pieces spanning many ideas which you might not be so familiar with, and so here are a few of my favourites…
The pose is adapted from Stanley Spencer’s painting ‘Double Nude Portrait: The Artist and His Second Wife’ (1937). The title is taken from a translation into English of Martin Heidegger’s "das Nichts selbst nichtet", "The Nothing Nothings". As with Spencer’s work their are slight religious references, including the figurative poses and the makeshift altar, however this is intertwined with both themes of erotica and in essence mortality. Unnervingly each of the women in the sculpture hold guns, one sticking out her tongue as she points hers towards the other. I could be reading too much into it but I’d guess that on another level the guns are representative of phalli, in fact Stanley Spencer’s painting depicts his ageing lesbian wife, his second wife, which also includes hunks of meat in the foreground. The absolute negative of infinity, something that most religions attempt to interpret symbollically, is nothing. Nothingness is indeed a negation, any meaning absorbed in nothingness, must itself be absent. Death is a negation of life, infinity is a negation of the finite, omnipresence is a negation of presence.
Toying with the notions of classical sculpture, the mutability of marble is astounding in this piece, representing a female figure, perched upon a cushioned pedestal, armed with a knife and RPG-7. The female figure has throughout history been used to symbolise all manner of subjects be it fertility, grace, beauty, nature, however this piece seems to reflect more of the state of modern society, the fearful public mindset engendered by mass media manipulation and corrupt government. More particularly the divisiveness between the sexes, the stranglehold of the male authoritarian agenda in many parts of the world, and the complex and almost inevitable collapse of personal relationships. The female body is designed to harbour life, in this sculpture it threatens to destroy it in the same breath.
Fallen was commissioned by Baken Park Lyceum in 1999 and is located at the Secondary school ‘Het Baken’ Almere, Holland, and first off, in case you’re confused, it’s actually nothing to do with UFO sightings in Holland, it’s more a comment about public art. More precisely referencing the with much of his work he refers to the identity and meaning of art, the origins of public art, its purpose and effect on the surrounding environment, or more simplistically ‘art falling from the sky’. Recalling the eighties, when local government frequently asked for works that functioned as a beacon for an entire district. In other words something monumental, nothing could be more monumental than the scale of our collective culture in the great scheme of things. We as a civilisation are fragile, our art commemorates miniscule changes in a microscopic Zeitgeist which relatively speaking, in the vast expanse of the universe, is so minute it is indicipherable.
A "Mitrailleuse" is a French word referring to all machine guns, however in English it only applies to volley guns with multiple barrels of rifle calibre. However I believe their maybe some wordplay going on here, such as with the French word ‘chantreuse’ meaning female singer. A female gunner, perhaps even stunner? Who knows, a poweful piece all the same.
Commissioned by the city of Zwolle, for the new city area of Stadshagen, part of a series of 4 monumental sculptures of mine, a site specific sculpture, this glorious marble statue towers above at five metres high and 4.5 metres wide. A beautiful piece taking a familiar sight way out of context, the experience of seeing planes fly above, leaving vapour trails, instant clouds across the skies has always left me emotionally torn. Both beautiful and damaging, much like most of the subject matter that Puckey engages.
See the rest of his work at www.thompuckey.com.
Tags: British, marble, sculpture, Thom Puckey
Related posts
