After they have played out before your eyes, where do visions live…?
This was a question I asked myself several years ago. Of course, the rational answer would be: in the memory of the individual visionary, where they develop, change, get retold or re-associate with other experiences and memories, and initiate new ideas or perspectives, all as part of the process of psychological integration. But other, non-rational answers are possible: these do not belong in the scientific mind that seeks to understand what is, what exists, or what objectively can be proven, but in the realm of experience, which reflects upon what is felt, what is seen, or what may be believed, no matter how outlandish or unreal. This realm, while not often factually correct, is nonetheless deeply relevant to human life and the condition of being alive as this complex, multi-faceted, multi-modal being.
Click on an image to view the work and read about each panel of this multi-panel frieze.
:: Click here to watch a short film exploring this artwork in detail ::
Believers in the supernatural might imagine that their visions dwell not in the mind, but in some otherworldly place, such as with a deity or in some magical realm. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I have had many experiences which look and feel supernatural, even though I know them to be generated solely from within my mind, itself emergent from my human brain, one of the most complex and poorly understood phenomena in the known universe. Such unreality for me doesn't detract from the beauty of a vision, its intensity, emotively compelling nature or its subjective meaningfulness. And there is one pervasive experience that I feel whenever I have a vision, or recall one that has been profound and foundational to my psychological make-up and wellbeing....
After they have played out, visions live within my body, in my blood and in my bones.
I feel entirely sure from a scientific perspective that this experience is neither credible nor remotely likely, but as an artist, I find it interesting to experience phenomena from the full range of human possibilities, and to run with them, without lending them my belief or commitment to truth. I hold that contemporary humanists are mistaken when they claim that modern people have no need of the transcendent and otherworldly. My non-rational visionary experiences are important to me, and deeply relevant to my life regardless of their non-factuality, and it is this delicately balanced spirit of inwardly-focused unreal play which my multi-panel frieze artwork ‘Nonaptych of My All-Too-Human Visions’ seeks to explore.
:: Nonaptych Of My All-Too-Human-Visions ::
:: 2019-23 :: 270cm x 90cm in nine 30cm x 90cm panels :: Acrylics, Inks & Markers on Canvas ::
:: Click here to watch a short film exploring this artwork in detail ::
This nine-panel artwork started out life in 2010 as a set of sketches for a series of longform portrait artworks with the working title ‘Man Of Visions’. These sketches evoked a number of foundational visionary experiences that have ‘lived’ within me for many years – some from times before I became a professional artist – and which I had never fully addressed in my arts practice. Other artistic commitments took precedence and in the fullness of time, I put these sketches away and moved on. This happens often with me: I produce many more sketches than fully realised artworks, so the process of selection can sometimes be very sharp. ‘Man Of Visions’ was one of many sketch sets that simply fell by the wayside.
However, in Summer 2019, I was invited to exhibit new work at an exhibition called 'Fêlures et Lumière (Cracks and Light)' at the Atelier Gustave in Paris, as part of a collaboration between the Dreams & Divinities international art initiative and Eine Chance zum Glück, an Austrian mental health charity. I was inspired to return to older sketches, to delve into my visionary prehistory and see if I could strike out in a completely new direction by returning to my roots. The ‘Man Of Visions’ sketches seemed perfect for this, and the series was brought back into the light, now renamed as ‘Human Visions’.
'Human Visions' series - Sketches and Markouts 2010-19
The first three ‘artworks’ – as they then were conceived – were presented in this show, and to my surprise they were curated as a triptych. At first, I wasn’t keen on this idea of envisaging these separate artworks as a single entity, but a seed was nonetheless planted. ‘Artworks’ #4 and #5 were shown in an exhibition in the UK and again, they were presented by the curator as a diptych. I still rebelled, but somewhere the seed germinated and started to grow.
By summer 2021, I had produced seven ‘artworks’ for ‘Human Visions’, with a view to create two more, when a major injury to my knee forced a hiatus in working on the majority of my arts projects, including this one. The coronavirus pandemic had already initiated a re-think of my creative life, in that I had begun to bring my previously latent practice of writing poetry into the foreground. Now, stuck at home and unable to walk, facing a surgical operation followed by a long journey with physiotherapy, I spent this difficult period working on poetry projects, and when the time felt right to resume, I began to re-think my artistic practice.
In particular, I began to focus upon my penchant for creating multi-panel artworks, such as Shadows Of The San and 'My Blood Is Red Ochre But My Heart Is Made From Stars', both created in 2010. My thirteen-panel Voice Project (still a work in progress at the time of writing) is also relevant here.
'Human Visions' series - Visual progress report 2020
I took a new look at my UV-painted frieze Sparkling Isolation from 2020, as well as The Ecstasy In Me, an unfinished seven-part series from 2017-2020 now re-conceived as a triptych, and decided to create a new frieze, entitled Are We Orbiting Simulated Lives, Or Memories Of Everything, Everything All At Once...?, for a prestigious art exhibition in Wollongong, Australia in September 2022.
By the time I felt ready to restart working on ‘Human Visions’ in late 2022, the seed first planted in Paris now bore fruit. I decided to re-imagine this nine-part series of artworks as a single nine-panel frieze. The final piece of the puzzle arrived in January 2023, with the following light-hearted post on social media:
“Work has begun on the final two pieces in my 'Human Visions' series which I've been working on since 2019. I say 'pieces', but I should say 'panels' as I've decided that once these are finished, all nine artworks will be considered as panels of a single, grand, multi-panel work. So yeah, not so much a series as... (checks notes... polygon, polyptych, nonagon) …a Nonaptych !!”
'Human Visions' series - Visual progress report 2021
In coming to name this final, grand frieze, I decided that ‘Human Visions’ was insufficient to describe the nature of this long and winding journey. If I had changed the title from ‘Man Of Visions’, it had been to reflect a subtle shift in my gender identity in the years after 2010, from ‘man’ to ‘queer male’… but ‘human' now sounded like I was trying to define the nature of visionary experiences for all people everywhere.
That wouldn’t do. I needed to make it more personal, and my journey with my busted knee, my mental health, and the emotional intimacy of my emergent poetry practice, evoked in me a desire to reflect something more fragile than ‘Human Visions’ might imply. Less strident and universalist in scope. I also found myself simultaneously proud and amused by this newly-coined word 'nonaptych' – my poetry practice is full of such idiosyncratic neologisms! – and wanted it in the title as well.
I am only human, but I am also all-too-human, with all the complexities, intimacies, tragedies, fractures and wonders that that phrase implies. In March 2023, while working on the final two panels – as they are now conceived – the title sailed into my mind: ‘Nonaptych Of My All-Too-Human Visions’.
'Nonaptych Of My All-Too-Human Visions' frieze - Visual progress report 2022
It has been quite a journey, of thirteen years, and many changes: conceptual with the artwork(s), and transformational in my life. This multi-panel artwork enfolds all these changes, some – like my shift in gender identity – have been slow-burning, while others – like my busted knee – have felt near-calamitous at times, but the visions persist, still flow through me, still run as rivers and streams through every cell, every living fibre.
They animate my blood and my bones, breathe with me through every inhale and exhale, pulse with every heartbeat. Inasmuch as I can only understand ‘forever’ as the full span of the days of my life until that final day when my eyes will close, they are, to me and perhaps to me alone, eternal. They will stay with me until the day I am no longer.
Bruce Rimell,
April 2023
Click on an image to view the work and read about each panel of this multi-panel frieze.
