Another Constable

John Constable had a lot to say about art and creativity and today’s post begins with two of his thoughts: “Painting is but another word for feeling” (1821) and “We see nothing truly until we understand it” (1836).

I was reminded of his insights when I was thinking about another artist in the NGV collection, who is no relation to him, but shares the same surname – Alan Constable. Before the coronavirus lockdown, I would see Alan on Fridays at Arts Project Australia where he has been making art for almost thirty years.

Alan was born in Melbourne in 1956 and is both legally blind (with limited pinhole vision) and deaf. At the age of eight, he became fascinated with light and developed a love of cameras. Given his sensory challenges, Peter Atkins, the well-known Australian artist who has collaborated with Alan noted that: “this fascination with objects that are totally reliant on vision to find, frame and capture an image – is not without irony”. From an early age, Alan would construct intricate replicas of cameras, made from cereal cartons and glue.

Following a group exhibition in St Martin’s Theatre Gallery in South Yarra, Alan began  working at Art Project Australia (APA), an organization devoted to supporting, mentoring and promoting artists with a range of neurocognitive disabilities and sensory impairments. His time at APA has allowed Alan to explore and develop his creative possibilities and today he is well-known and highly regarded, both nationally and internationally. As a multi-disciplinary artist, he is proficient in many mediums including pastel, gouache, paint and ceramics.

However, it is his series of ceramic cameras and other ocular objects that he has been making since 2007 which have brought him most attention. These have been shown at the Australian Ceramic Trienniale in Sydney in 2009, at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, and in ‘Melbourne Now’ at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2104. Alan has also had a solo exhibition curated by the Australian artist, Ricky Swallow, in Los Angeles and been included in exhibitions curated by the Museum of Everything in London and at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam in 2016. He is currently represented by galleries in Australia, England and America.

Alan’s artistic style, whether it is expressed in his paintings or his ceramic works, has been attributed to the way in which he uses his extremely limited sight to focus on the object he is making. His cameras are usually based on images of real cameras taken from magazine advertisements. They have a fleshy, almost organic feel and their very ‘handmade’ nature, with their imperfections, thumb prints and colourful glazing, means that Alan is very ‘present’ in all of them. Each has its own quirky comic personality and they seem like extensions of Alan’s body.  It is as if Alan is lovingly creating not just a type of camera, but a personal camera to be used in a specific way at a particular time. David Hurlston, Curator of Australian Art at the NGV says of the cameras: “[they} become a very personal and touching tribute … [and] contain traces of humanity”. His work has been compared with both the American sculptor Claes Oldenburg and artist Philip Guston.

Peter Atkins was involved in the collaborative endeavour the ‘Polaroid Project’ with Alan in 2015. Shown locally, this project also toured to New York City and Philadelphia. Peter describes what it was like watching Alan work. He says: “I was impressed by the immediacy of his construction process, unselfconscious expression and love for his subject matter. Alan works alone, holding the reference object millimetres from his eyes, scanning and touching the surface then committing the details to memory to render his impressions. The clay is carefully pushed, pinched, scraped and scratched, then pieced together with his fingers. He works quickly, hands covered in clay and slip-glaze, as each camera component is carefully built then assembled—body, lens, viewfinder, buttons, knobs and handles… the lens and the viewfinder, seem to interest him the most. Alan accentuates the visual operatives of the camera, hollowing out the large round lens at the front and presenting an open void. Likewise, the viewfinder is often enlarged, creating yet another window to the world. Alan draws our attention to these portals, inviting us to look through these distorted and exaggerated openings to see the world as he does himself”. 

Although the cameras might be seen as an extension of Alan they are also an extension of us and our memories.  We all have connections with cameras, with posing and with recording. Cameras capture memories and provide us with a personal visual archive. In turning a mass produced consumer product into a personal object, Alan reminded me of John Constable’s quote: “We see nothing truly until we understand it”. And in this sense, he is the quintessential ‘Constable artist’.

The NGV has 14 of Alan’s cameras in the collection. They can often be seen in the intrafilament spaces in NGVA. Further discussion of ‘The Polaroid Project’ can be found on Peter Atkins website (including the announcement of another collaboration with Alan, ‘Kodak Camera Kit’): https://peteratkins.com.au/home. More of Alan’s art practice can be found on the Arts Project Australia website: https://www.artsproject.org.au/