What are artists thinking and doing? We hope you enjoy the first in our new series of ‘Reflections from Home’. No.1: Oscar Murillo, La Paila, Colombia
‘Constantly moving around has been very important to me in the past decade. But now there are road blocks out of the village and I am truly here, the place where I was born. It feels like an entropic moment that could signal new directions for me as an artist.
A few weeks ago we used the space where I can make work as a distribution centre for essential supplies for local families. Art has to confront life. Now I am making new ‘catalyst’ paintings, using green alongside blue, red and black. I am in the tropics, its humid and hot. Surrounded by nature. I find myself asking “what now?” A time to rethink and redirect, a collision of time and intent.’ Oscar Murillo, April 2020.
Listen to this recording of the sound of La Paila at 8.30am
Andrew Nairne, Director of Kettle’s Yard, writes: ‘over the coming weeks, we are asking artists we have worked with to offer their reflections from home, through images and text, at a time when millions around the world are homebound.
Jim Ede, its creator, described Kettle’s Yard as “a space, an ambience, a home”. For Ede, the home was a social place in which art and life might become inseparable. As the artist Anthea Hamilton has observed, the Kettle’s Yard House can also be understood as ‘a state of mind’. Of course, for many the concept of ‘home’ is also deeply personal, and often economic and political too, as our recent exhibition ‘Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan’, explored. For Jim Ede, who never forgot his time in the trenches in WW1, Kettle’s Yard was a welcoming sanctuary, a place of renewal and insight which could sharpen how we engage and act in the world’.
More about Oscar Murillo
Oscar Murillo is currently in the village of La Paila, Colombia, where he was born in 1986. He is sharing three details of new ‘catalyst’ paintings* in progress, alongside three photographs taken near the village.
*To create his ‘catalyst’ paintings a ‘master canvas’ is first saturated with paint; Murillo then places another canvas on top and works into it on the floor of his studio using a stylus. Through this process, paint is transferred between the two canvases, creating highly energised marks. In this series Murillo typically employs a limited palette of colours.
The exhibition Actions. The image of the world can be different marked the opening of the new Kettle’s Yard in February 2018. Oscar Murillo was one of the thirty-eight exhibiting artists.
The following year, in April 2019, we were delighted to welcome Oscar Murillo back to Kettle’s Yard for a solo exhibition. The exhibition included painting, installation, sound and live performance, and took place in the galleries and across Kettle’s Yard.
Reflections from Home No.2: Vicken Parsons, Norfolk, England
Reflections from Home No.3: Rana Begum, Hackney, England
