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In the hills not far from Parma and close to my house in Italy, there is a battered barn belonging to an old neighbouring farmer, Signor Pinot. Its rickety structure is cobbled together from an extraordinary assortment of rusting metal sheets, corrugated scraps, bits of formica, pieces of wood and other odds and ends - in fact any old rubbish that Signor Pinot can lay his hands on. However it is assembled with instinctive care and a surprising formal sensibility. When I first saw the barn I was so intrigued that I took a series of photographs of it. I had not been introduced to Signor Pinot at that time and suddenly he appeared and chased me away, very suspicious of my camera. Later he laughed at me when I explained that I thought his barn really interesting and attractive; he couldn’t understand what I meant. Signor Pinot’s barn-collage set off a chain reaction and I began a series of little collages of my own, inspired by his patchwork, ramshackle design. These pieces eventually evolved into these collages. The seductive quality of collage depends on the chance accumulation of diverse visual information; it operates on several levels, sometimes visual, sometimes by association, with a poetic resonance given off by the selected objects. The mix and medley of assembled things takes the picture beyond the effect of pure paint. Under the surfaces there are built-up and stuck down materials. I have cannibalised previous, unsuccessful paintings in these collages. Several old books came in useful and supplied rich material. Handmade paper from Indonesia, newspaper accounts of political scandals, crumpled envelopes, dull bank statements, miscellaneous train tickets, wrapping paper, defunct passports, and so on - all went into the collages. Rubbish which might be routinely rejected was recycled and placed next to precious piano scores, pages from history and personal letters, in the hope that the momentous past might collide in some effective way with the dreary, commonplace present. My aim is to somehow transform trivial material into significant form. This clutter and jumble has been covered by layers of pigment, rubbed down and scrubbed back to expose what was beneath so as to hint at previous processes and decisions. Eventually the collages gained a particular veneer and character beyond mere appearance. I wanted the final images to operate like memory itself, with some passages easily recognised and others lost forever beneath concealments and accumulations. The scratched surfaces emerged with a ‘fossil record’ of the collages’ own making. While producing these images, I have tried to convey what I have learnt from the simple, poetic vision contained in Signor Pinot’s barn.
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© 2007, Gerard Hastings |