Saw Lubaina Himid's vibrant and theatrical Tate exhibition today. Plenty of questions about how we might re-present shared cultural journeys by re-arranging agency, and re-directing our values. But in all the cut-out figures and polemical text, I missed a feeling of how the light falls, how the brush unflattens surface, how shadows and the angles of un-posed gesture tell subtler stories of those daily compromises with which we are all involved. I am back with a cleaner in the warehouse disposing of plastic wrap into a plastic refuse sack. Red writing on 'Caution: wet floor' sign; red patches on his gloves; red handle to his grabbing device which is tucked under his arm. Conversations held in colours not words. Painting works in different ways. I was drawn to shades of grey in the black plastic, the trousered legs and their shadows - and to the way the artificial light falls on all the yellows - lemon, cadmium and ochre. Truths can be shown rather than explained. |