LIKE TRYING TO COAX A LION OUT OF MY CHEST

LIKE TRYING TO COAX A LION OUT OF MY CHEST (2009)

LIKE TRYING TO COAX A LION OUT OF MY CHEST is a fragmentary confessional. Drawing for the artist Amiel Courtin-Wilson is a private practice in tandem with his image making. In this exhibition the images are liberated from the pages of five years of journal entries and writ large on the walls of Utopian Slumps in a series of twenty five three foot by three foot drawings. A saxophone filled with napalm also makes an appearance.

Solo exhibition
Drawings and mixed media

Utopian Slumps Gallery

Curator:
Melissa Loughnan

Writer Shane Jesse Christmass on Amiel Courtin-Wilson

The pessimist Schopenhauer once wrote, and he was speaking about writers here, but for our purposes, let’s imagine he’s speaking about artists.

“[Artists] can be divided into meteors, planets and fixed stars. The first produce a momentary effect: you gaze up, cry: ‘Look!’ – and then they vanish forever. The second, the moving stars, endure for much longer. By virtue of their proximity they often shine brighter than the fixed stars which the ignorant mistake them for… The third alone are unchanging, stand firm in the firmament, shine by their own light and influence all ages equally … Unlike the others, they do not belong to one system (nation) alone: they belong to the Universe.

But it is precisely because they are so high that their light usually takes so many years to reach the eyes of the dwellers on earth.”

As you walk around this ‘Lion’ – this jungle king, this Panthera Leo, that’s trying to escape from a ribcage, which category does this exhibition exist within, Meteors? Planets? Fixed stars? All answers on a postcard, preferably one that has a ruin of a building on it.

As you may know, Amiel Courtin- Wilson is a filmmaker. These drawings are an outlet. Outlet = Pipe or Conduit. These drawings are instantaneous. Instantaneous = Immediate or ‘on the spot’.

These paintings are righteous, or are they? Righteous = Virtuous or Respectable. Sinful = Bad or Corrupt. Are these drawings spiritual? Spiritual = Unworldly or Psychic. It’s a big ask isn’t it?

The Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, in his poem numbered ‘202’ wrote that:

“Much we have to fear, big-mouth beside me! Our tobacco turns into dust, nutcracker, friend, idiot!”

– What do we, as simple people, have to fear?

– Is this outsider art?

– Outside of what? - a giant priggish centipede?

– Outside of outsider art?

– Inside out from outsider art?

– Who cares? This is destruction.

“Hell is of this world and there are men who are unhappy escapees from hell, escapees destined ETERNALLY to reenact their escape.”

- Antonin Artaud

I can hear Amiel gulping in these drawings, gulping the insufferable, obese haunting.

They’re not cute pictures. What are you even doing here? You should constantly ask yourself this?

I know now what is going on here with Amiel’s drawings. I never used to. Jean Cocteau, who was also a filmmaker, and boxing manager, wrote, that “the living language of dreams. The dead language of waking … We must interpret and translate.” He also scribed that “genius is the farthest extreme of the practical”. There’s nothing practical in this exhibition.

AND FINALLY: There’s one or two murderers in any crowd. There’s nothing practical in this exhibition, except social harmony.

Parts assembled and parts written by Shane Jesse Christmass, July 2009.