Chris Bucklow

Developing a Visual Language

Course Description
This course is for artists and photographers who wish to refine or develop their work’s abilty to ‘speak’ for them. We will look at work together and talk about what it says, how it says it, and what tradition the work belongs within. It is often these aspects of one’s work which are the hardest to see. Early in the course I will give a talk about the history of the shifting ‘speech’ paradigms that lie behind the art and photography of the past. With this perspective, we will then be able to look at our own work, and the art of our time, with a more actute awareness of the language that it speaks. I will then lead a discussion in which we will then test our new understanding against any work (contemporary or historical) that the participants wish to discuss. (Please bring reproductions of favourite works for discussion.) Many people are content to trust that their work speaks from some unconscious source. It is my belief that work always springs from the unconscious, and therefore, this course is not aimed at people who are happy not knowing what it is their work says. Instead, this course is for those who are curious to find out a little more about those unsconscious springs. The work produced after more knowledge is gained will still continue to emerge from the unconscious, but hopefully what we will have initiated is a dialogue which will enrich both the conscious and unconscious areas of each individual. I also believe that all work arises from very personal needs and wishes. Even work which apparently deals with the external world seems to me to have a deeply personal dimension. This course is also aimed at those who might be interested in exploring this proposition. I will again give an illustrated talk, this time at the mid-point of the course, about the historical setting to this aspect of self-symbolisation in art making, and I will lead a discussion in which we again examine our own works or works of any other artists.

Artist's Biography
Christopher Bucklow, a modern British photographer, was born in 1957 in Manchester, England. After a recent exhibition in Riflemaker, London, critic Jonathan Jones wrote "Bucklow has a fertile, productive imagination, and it generates art with a conviction and relaxed energy. Here is drawing that has passion and unpredictability of line, and painting nuanced in texture and sparking with colour. His art is elegantly passionate, [part of] a British historical tradition." His photographic work was published in the book 'Guest' by Blindspot, New York (2004). A book of his drawings, with conversations with the psychoanalyst Adam Philips and essays by Marina Warner and Roger Malbert, was published by The British Museum and the Wordsworth Trust in 2004. This book also included Bucklow’s essay on Blake: ‘The Sea of Time and Space’. The artist’s interest in Blake is mainly centred around Blake’s invention of a personal myth which is used as a dynamic description of his own psyche. Chris’ work was shortlisted for the 2007 Jerwood Drawing Prize.

Artist's Statement
I find it difficult to make a statement. But what I know is that I am forced to make images - and I am obliged to make them represent my experience in as large and precise a way as I can imagine. The form, mode, and medium of this desire changes as I refine my means of reaching for my tantalizing goal. I may have gotten more able; I have certainly become specific.