JOHN PAPAS Remembrance of Things Past 19th February – 6th March, 2010
Remembrance of Things Past: The Carvers is a successful example of how careful study of Papas’ work is rewarded by the revealing of layer after layer of meaning; the viewer is able to enrich the artist’s intention with his or her own response and interpretation. Even the title has a Proustian overtone.
The dominant feature of this work is the centrally placed ladder symbolising the link not just between places, but the connection between past and present, and the influence of ancient knowledge on our own, to be used or ignored.
Human destructiveness is symbolised in the drilled marks on the church spire in the work. Whether this damage is caused from within or without the resulting disrepair is the same.
In Papas’s 2008 show By Man’s Hand the palmlike cycad was present in many of the works. This time the palm tree is given more prominence, a powerful allusion to the artist’s Mediterranean heritage as well as to climatic warming. The palm (in The Carvers) is fixed over an application of tissue paper, which could represent the precarious situation in which we find ourselves.
Papas’s use of collage, in this case the application of architectural reproductions, reflects not just our recycling of older materials, but our ability to build on what has gone before, so the Greek influencing the Roman which in turn led to the Neo-Classical and other styles.
He is also visiting his own artistic past with the combined use of ceramic, brass and found objects all of which have been adopted in his works of yesteryear and refers to his own ancestry as the son of Greek (and Scottish) émigrés.
Perhaps John Papas is saying in his quiet, firm manner that we have great foundations, and should build upon them in a sustainable way.
Written by Cameron Drawbridge February, 2010 with greatly appreciated assistance from Jack Lasenby.
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