Gloria Ojulari Sule

17th October 2004

My remit to re-contextualize, and locate new virtual versions of my artform simultaneously within the studio space and cyber space remains embryonic. Logging onto ‘photoshop’ and ‘imovie’ - ‘flash’ yet to be revisited - has led to results in the reality space, which has been transformed from a previously clutter-filled space into a clean and tidy zone, old works have been filed away and unwanted canvases have become the newly painted layers, windows, data of my ‘calling’

A cyclical motion of ideas filters down from the multiple options offered up by photoshop. I utter: ‘My paintings are influenced by the digital experience’, my new series of oceanic landscapes re-inspired by the seemingly endless colour variations that envelop the ‘logged on’ sensation. I could be drifting off, distracted from the original plan,
suspended indefinitely somewhere between virtual and practical realities with no cares in the world wide web, hooked on paint bucket...replacing colour, saturating with colour, sampling the hue, gradiating and selecting, colour pickering, equalising, posterizing....

‘Is art therapy?’ ‘I need it’, but I also need to move on from gorgeously saturating oceans, glistening sands and from ever-changing, but fabulously addictive, sunny combinations applied with the wonderful virtual paint bucket and the reality pots of variety acrylics.

So now, what was my aim? What was my original idea?????... the proposal is not lost, this is all part of the vision ... what the work is about ... it is ... the ocean, the air, the landscape ... spaces moved in, over, on and through ... getting from there to here ... it’s all part of it, it comes
before the.....the space.....the place of convergence ....culminating in one place.....the inner city space.....journeys end for so many......

The cultural mix is ever expanding. 17 languages are spoken in my local area.

Printed information to Council tenants lists 12 languages under the heading ‘If English is not your first language and you need a translation, we can get one for you’. Seems fair enough but how does it feel when in every sphere of life this kind offer can not be available? And what of the
mysteries of the inner city, the way of life that has evolved in this fragmented zone, the inner city exists in the outer edge, on the edge; new arrivals to this urban watering hole, seeking sanctuary from the turmoil of war, asylum from political ostracization, are they exchanging one war zone for another?? ??

In my work I choose to ignore the realities directly around me, describing what I do as a ‘celebration’ of our culturally diverse racially complex society. But can I veneer over what I see and have been touched by, there is a reality beyond my understanding. I thought the sound was two bangers going off in the night, it did seem a bit early in the year, now all those fireworks will sound different. Just as they did to my friend when she arrived in the area one October from war-torn Sierra Leone to have bangers going off all around her and her young daughter. Not the ideal place to be transported to, it was hard for them.

Guns...............bang...bang I know the sound now and I have heard it before since moving here...but...guns....drugs....poverty ......prostitution.....I painted the celebratory works, that was me, but what will this work turn out to be......different........ things are very different now............... there’s A REALITY OUT THERE AND IT AIN’T TO BE CELEBRATED...................

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