On the field of Truth, on the battlefield of life

Installation View, Korkos Gallery 2008
Photograph: Courtesy Mori Gallery

This series of work is based upon the Bhagavadgita. Eighteen felt embroidered pieces represent the eighteen chapters of the Gita, just as the chapters reflect the eighteen days of war that follow Krishna's counsel of Arjuna in the Mahabharata The vision of the Divine Form as Including All Forms1 - the installation forms a meditation upon the dialogue of Krishna and Arjuna. Accordingly each embroidered work is small, tactile and easily nestled in the palm, an intimate object and contemplation. Alike the paperwork the felt pieces are suspended out from the wall surface so as to create shadows. And between the art-object, the viewer and the field a discourse is opened: a relationship that changes with the light, the distances and approach (up close or from afar) to each piece or to the works as one wall piece: the one in the many.

Untitled no.2 On the field of Truth, on the battlefield of Life, 2008 

felt, cotton thread, glass beads, sequins
Photograph: Courtesy Mori Gallery

Untitled no.6 On the field of Truth, on the battlefield of life, 2008 

felt, cotton thread, glass beads
Photograph: Courtesy Mori Gallery

Untitled no.7 On the field of Truth, on the battlefield of life, 2008 

felt, cotton thread, glass beads
Photograph: Courtesy Mori Gallery

Untitled no.15 On the field of Truth, on the battlefield of life, 2008

felt, cotton thread, glass beads, sequins
Photograph: Courtesy Mori Gallery

Untitled no.1 On the field of Truth, on the battlefield of life, 2008 
felt, cotton thread, glass beads, sequins
Photograph: Courtesy Mori Gallery 

I have found it extremely difficult to set down my thoughts on this series, and this itself is testament to how peculiar this project is to my practice. On the field of Truth... originally seemed to develop as an off-shoot to the ongoing project; At once a shadow and a splendor: this work is/was intended to be a discussion on how individuals define Truth today. First, if they can or do. Secondly what kind of language or structures they employ to define this term. My plan was to establish an archive of all the responses I hoped to receive, and eventually interpret this into a growing project-installation of paper cut-outs. Each work a representation of an individuals' conception of Truth. For this purpose I was exploring theories and representations of Truth in philosophy, religion, art etcetera, and in this frame had begun my first reading of the Bhagavadgita. Additionally I had made my first attempt at getting my question out there and responded to - it had not been successful and I was beginning to doubt if the project would ever get off the ground. This was disappointing on several levels; aside from my misgivings of the installation being realised, it had also led me to appraise my skills as an artist, researcher, friend and communicator. (Towards all of these I am still grappling towards a better understanding and resolution, but I am hopeful I will eventually create my archive!) But I think it is important to understand that the place I was in for this first reading of the Bhagavadgita, was again one of those hard times when I was questioning my veracity as an artist and communicator, and furthermore as a practitioner through the methods and ways I worked. So I think specific to this little crisis in time what I came away with was the concept of Virtue in Work which is a fundamental of the text: 
But he who, with strong body serving mind, Gives up his mortal powers to worthy work, Not seeking gain, Arjuna! Such an one Is honourable. Do thine allotted task! ... such earthly duty do Free from desire, and thou shalt well perform2 

Simultaneous to this little epiphany an exhibition was suddenly scheduled, for which I had no work! I had a month to respond to this invitation and so, heavy with the disruption of one project and this reading I decided to respond to the poem - and see if could translate these new thoughts and concerns I was having into visuals, and also invigorate my working methods – by which I meant to test out if I could work in a different way. That decided, I set myself the following task: To everyday read a section of the poem and than in contemplation of that reading create a work. 

For me this was a new mode of practice. Usually I make work in what I consider a very practiced and programmatic way. I have an idea/thoughts I want to express; and then I keep shuffling them round in my head until I arrive at a visual solution. I then set about quite directly producing this visual, and nothing much changes from then on – it is simply a matter of producing the work. For me, it feels that this process goes through a lot of initial permutations – from feelings and ideas, to making definitions and connections, to finding the relevant subjects and visual tools to represent these - it is as if this process is a translation from a written to visual format. So establishing this little project – directly responding to the interpretation and inspiration of each daily reading was an entirely new approach. Each piece in its shape and colour were responses that came in the moment: the forms of the shapes, the choice of coloured threads, and combinations of beads and sequins. I think I was trying to test out this aspect of the Bhagavadgita: of Virtue in Work. – and to keep this spirit alive within the work. Or, that is to say, following the counsel of the Bhagavadgita to be able to access this transcendental state through the act of ones work. Hence each piece forms the ritual and the meditation of the issue of work. Continuing with this train of thought then, (a bit like following a faith) there were certain observances imposed upon the project. For example the daily reading was also connected to my decision that one object had to be completed each day. Thus cementing a relationship between the reading and the making (soul/body). Likewise the continual vigilance and work that underscore the attainment of the Atman, so to each individual work was re-assessed daily for its context within the growing installation. Thus each piece is of its own. But is also a part of the whole. 

Connectedness 
Before any if this could begin there was the initial choice of materials: felt objects and embroidery - and it did take some days as I weighed up different forms, materials and so forth. Eventually I chose the black felt because I wanted the works to stand out against the white of the walls they would hang on. And so that the coloured beads, threads and sequins would shine and animate across these two 'fields'. In the sense of continuity of work practice, the black felt related to my most recent series; The Shadow Class: a series of life size cut-outs in black felt based on my silhouette, which is a commentary on the myriad forms of contemporary slavery. I wanted to make small objects through which the intimate movements of their making would be reflected in the detail of the final piece. They would be personal objects to be handled and cradled. Touchable. Through this I wanted to be able express this meaning of Virtue in Work, but also how this concept relates to the problematic social structure of Caste in Hinduism. Hence the reference to craft, needlework, sewing whilst suggestive of quiet labour, and the idea of woman's work, distinctly spoke to the pernicious forms of contemporary labour practices: child workers, indentured and bonded labour etcetera. Whilst each piece is an experiment on practice and creation, they are not without awareness of the place of industry in today's economy: the growing gulfs between developed and developing worlds of rich and poor and the concomitant unregulated labour practices and breaches of human rights they engender. 

I chose to title this piece with the opening line of Juan Mascaro's 1967 translation as it intelligently circumscribes the metaphysical challenge of the poem. First, the opening chapter sets the scene of the poem within the Mahabharata - on the eve of the war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. In doing this it in turn places the poem to be conceived of as an essential synopsis of Hinduism - as a poem where the intent is a spiritual discourse placed within a story it also conceives of the many principles Hinduism encompasses – as religion, belief, philosophy, myth and narratives. The riddle this poem encourages us to consider is: What is occurring in this conversation between god and disciple? Is it an incitement to war or to life? On the brink of battle and the implicit destruction of life, a philosophical dialogue ensues - 

And this perplexity relates to recent projects of mine which have centred around the spiritual and social challenges of war. When and where it becomes difficult to define ideals such as victory, nationhood and respect, and which in turn begin to confound an understanding of the value of human life. These same doubts and scruples for which Arjuna seeks counsel are given voice and debate in the Bhagavadgita. At the last, it may be possible to say; that the central metaphysical challenge of this poem is not that it is literally to do with war. Krishna is not necessarily instructing warmongering. But more so towards the fight for life. The battle is that of the soul. The spiritual intent of Bhagavadgita is the counsel of the soul. It is about the fight for Truth in ones self. The battle of the soul over the body. So the Bhagavadgita is manifold( that is definitely its religious doctrine: that Krishna as the manifestation of Truth is within everything, and as such can be realised in everything surrounding us). Yet, by placing the context on the eve of a battle the poem offers us the profound opportunity to discourse upon the variety of self-understanding and self- realisation that a human must fight for and challenge. The conundrum that the subject of war poses is a precedent for undertaking a resolution of the self. So this in part led me to a realisation of what I have possibly been struggling with in these projects I have taken up whose subjects are war. In choosing this title I not only refer to these recent projects and doubts and searches regarding the outward nature of War, but perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates what I was in fact trying to discover – the place of Truth and as such, of self-realisation. 

Thus I return to stressing that this particular project is based upon my first readings of this poem, not simply because it is, but because I shy of this first interpretation that this project stands in for. For as I read daily I saw there was always more. Significantly, I began to consider that what I had originally regarded as a sideways step from a larger installation, was most probably actually a vital component of the same project. That one begat the other and that these investigations were in fact equal parts to a new search and direction that my practice was taking. More so, in working through this experiment not only did it bring me to a better understanding of what I an hoping to achieve in the installation At Once A Shadow and Splendor, but also that it was my own definitions that had imposed the limitations to its growth and potential receipt. 

So as I read and stitched and embroidered I came to think along from this that perhaps the reading and interpretation of the Bhagavadgita would become a sustained and personal search. And just as readers of the Bhagavadgita have turned daily to if for reflection, so to would it now influence my practice, and that On the field of Truth, on the battle-field of life should be regarded as the first result in what I sense will be a continuing practice of experiments and readings formed from the Bhagavadgita. For as Arjuna, the student, asks of Krishna in chapter 10: 

speak to me again in full of thy power and of they glory, for I am never tired, never, of hearing thy words of life3 

Ah! Yet again recount, Clear and complete, Thy great appearances, The secrets of Thy Majesty and Might, Thou High Delight of Men! Never enough Can mine ears drink the Amrit of such words!4

1In William Quan Judge's translation (1890) this is the title he gives to ch. 11. Sir Edwin Arnold's better known translation of 1900 gives ch. 11 the title: The Manifesting of the One and Manifold. 2Trans. Arnold, Sir Edwin. Bhagavadgita. New York: Dover Publications Inc, 1993. 3Trans. Mascaro, Juan. Bhagavadgita. London: Penguin, 2003. 4Trans. Arnold, Sir Edwin. Bhagavadgita. New York: Dover Publications Inc, 1993.