Excerpts from the Pieta~Series

The Pieta~Series, exhibited at Flowers New York, deals with the regeneration of subject matter within abstraction. This strand of research concentrates on the notion of improvisation, and the reforming of pictorial space and structures in a similar manner to the way jazz musicians such as John Coltrane can restructure and improvise on songs such as ‘My Favourite Things’ and develop a profound ‘new’ composition initiated from the fragments of a deconstructed Broadway melody.

The paintings focus on the interpretation of two specific Michelangelo sculptures of the Pieta (Accademia and the Museo del Duomo, Florence), and investigates whether or not this specific narrative sequence can be ‘carried’ by an abstract painting. The idea of abstraction carrying a narrative is the central tenet of Blacklock’s ongoing practice-led research. The work conceived involved taking the form of the sculpture apart, interpreting forms as lines or as shapes, reversing the tonality of the original marble so that the forms are depicted in black on white, ‘cartooning’ figures and creating a differing tension within the forms, similar to the way that John Coltrane manifests his version of ‘My Favourite Things’.

The developmental work for this series was exhibited at Wimbledon as part of a research cluster initiative examining the ‘Past within the Present’ (with Keir Smith and Anita Taylor) and exposing process and production in the reinterpretation of historic works of art. ‘Past within the Present’ have developed this research project in relation to individual collections, with exhibitions at the Barber Institute Birmingham and Northampton Museum and Art Gallery planned for 2008-09.

George Blacklock's research is centred on the progressive development of abstract painting - "what this fictional space can and cannot do". This interest in pictorial / fictional space has led to an enquiry into the possibility of narrative in abstract painting.

'A painting is quite a complex object,' says Blacklock, 'complex in its making, complex in its reading'. In the studio he finds a similar complexity of thought: 'a collision of ideas, images and instinctive speculation.' He believes that painting is a continuum of activity and that paintings betray, rather than demonstrate, intentions. To him, this suggests a more complex relationship to intention than might be expected, and that 'an intention arises from a whole web of ideas, rather than in linear fashion. The most pertinent quality to have in the studio is that of watchfulness.'

He works in a sequential or open series of paintings, in each, a shape or form is revisited/restated within different 'contexts'. The use of variable pictorial space tied to a specific formal 'narrative' stems directly from his interest in religious paintings and sculptures on such themes as 'Annunciations' and 'Pietas'.

His current work re- interprets such 'given' narratives to allow other or 'extra' narratives to occur.