We Remember it For Them - Sharon Gal

Beyond the realms of mere conceptualism, beneath surface fripperies,
three artists dive into the dark pools of their unconscious, treading
that tricky tightrope between intellect and emotion. Their inner
mapless journeys travel through the weird grimoires and deliriums of
childhood to a warped wonderland on the edge of sanity. An unruly
rampage around Mr Freud’s kooky cabinet of consultations that cocks a
snook at dusty theory and introduces a contemporary reworking of
Modernism.

Ruth Calland’s paintings are made blind, by not looking directly at the
canvas but retaining instead a visual awareness of the image to be
painted. This process leaves a space for play and reinvention to
superimpose itself upon the picture, like some weird poltergeist
imprint. As Adrian Searle, writing in The Guardian, recently pointed
out “only mediocre painting never dares, or edits out its snarl-ups and
chaotic passages.”

For Calland, creation and destruction are inextricably linked, her
trance-like process meditating on violent acts, the sacred and the
profane. She believes that “it is important to enter the terror and
chaos of our own destructive impulses, in order to know our full
nature”. The resulting blind images often appear partially dismantled
or in disarray, their lack of resolution a reality that becomes part of
the subject itself.

Ruth Calland is an artist and psychotherapist.

Sharon Gal’s work deals with notions relating to the hidden, inner,
eprivai world of childhood. The title of her series of drawings on
tissues - We Can Remember It For You, is taken from a short story by
Phillip K Dick, which explores the implementation of false memories.
Her intensely coloured drawings on their delicate supports are of
famous film stars as children. These icons robbed of their celebrity
have an immense fragility intensified by the not knowingness about
their future.

Gal has said, “there is a contrast between the sweet and naïve images
and the text which accompanies them, which suggests hurt, pain and a
sense of dark menacing atmosphere”. This juxtaposition creates an
ambiguous and strangely disturbing narrative, which hints at nursery
crimes, monstrous mothers and lullaby cheats.

Sharon Gal is a cross-disciplinary artist, performer and musician; she
presents her own weekly show for Resonance104.4 FM.

Esther Planas

On the 25.11.04 Esther Planas wrote in her online diary:
dear diary....seems I still alive...seems that no one has done it
yet.....I want to do it..but fuck..I am a coward...maybe some day....

Esther Planas is the achingly and archetypally poetic visionary,
playing out her own life/love/art dramas in her work – meshing it all
together in a glorious fuck it collage. Her confessional practice
predates Emin, influenced instead by the original hardcore exponent of
the genre, Kathy Acker.

Esther’s is a plaintive world where everything is continually in flux.
Her persona shifting between the wannabe roles of rebel, rock-star,
artist, painter, poet, porn star and writer. In her art this personal
world is opened up, creating a space for the audience to drift through,
to read her narrative as they would a text.

As we tumble down the rabbit hole and teeter on the edge of chaos we
realise that unlike Alice, Esther’s wonder is an underland created from
inside her own fetishes.

Esther Planas is a visual artist, writer and musician – she is the
publisher of Dark Star and plays with Dirty Snow.