Stanley Donwood: Hollywood Dooom

“Everything is fucked, everything, and really, we all know this,” wrote Stanley Donwood in way of explanation of his Lost Angeles body of work, a series of Doomsday-depicting linocuts including a monster 18ft panorama of Hollywood being destroyed.

It was an admission out of character for a man normally hesitant to explain his artwork in concrete terms: “I’m not the kind of artist that puts thoughts into people’s heads, that dictates what they should think,” he said in an interview for his most recent exhibition.

Yet while the clarity is out of character when it comes to the artwork, it’s not out of character of the man himself. Reclusive? Yes, Donwood is famously reluctant to occupy a public space, preferring to roam the woodlands and anonymity of out-of-city life. He guards his personal life in the same mists of darkness that can be found recurring through much of his recent artwork, wrapped around trees or cloaking a menagerie of undefined creatures. He thrives off ambiguity.

But talk to Donwood for any length of time and his passions are clear, his moral compass set and the ethical underpinning of his work transparent. He is angry at injustice, damning of our environmental irresponsibility, positively raging about social inequality.

The man and his work are usually separate, though. If you try and relate his general comments back to his work he will shrug. Maybe smile. He’ll tell you how he made it, and what circumstances the work arose from. But ask what the work is about and you’ll usually get nothing back. Or too much back - a complex cascade of interpretation that drowns rather than clarifies.

You work it out, is the message.

So you are left with a jigsaw of his history, his past commentary, snippets from his conversations and statements out of context. You add the pieces to the great patchwork of his body of work – an eclectic collection of influences, methodologies and mediums — and you try and make sense of what he is trying to say. What he is trying to do. What you are supposed to learn.

This much we know about him personally: he’s Essex born, 1968; he went to Art college, both in his home country and in Exeter (the city where he met Thom Yorke), he likes to hike and to camp out in cut-off places; he is insatiably interested in history and patterns and in knowing the what, where, why and how of all he encounters and experiences.

This much we know about him professionally: he has worked on every Radiohead album since 1994’s The Bends and the root idea of the Lost Angeles work originated in the artwork used for Yorke’s solo album Eraser, titled London Views; he has held around 18 exhibitions and picked up two Grammy awards; he is a magpie of artistic technique and medium — drawing, sculpting, printing, painting, cutting, building and recording; he is an author and illustrator of books.

And the shards of his commentary, comments and statements made across decades and in multiple scenarios, spaces and situations? We can try and make them fill the gaps.

Yet Donwood is mischievous. He likes to play with perception and reality in real life as much as he does in his artwork. He casts a chink of light you think brings clarity yet you look closer only to find it’s artificial and of source unknown. You spin yourself into an interpretive web of your own making and find yourself lost. Real is not real. Statements and commentary and comments contradict. Donwood is solid, but ungraspable.

If there is any message from Donwood, then, it is that meaning and perception are complex. Perspectives shift. Context distorts.

However, you come back to Lost Angeles. To the brutalism of a black and white linocut of the West’s cultural epicenter disintegrating. And at its heart, Hollywood Dooom is as clear a statement as Donwood could make. Originally carved into eighteen separate panels of linoleum then hand burnished onto Japanese Kozo paper, the print sees the City of Angels being dismantled, ripped apart in ways impossible to misinterpret.

It’s seemingly so straightforward, so unlike Donwood. And he is so willing to explain himself. Again, writing of the piece and the show, he wrote:

“Many famous and well-known landmarks are there, wreathed in destruction, in doom, in endings. In these end times, you may wish to see it, to revel in the vacuous art that our culture has sunk to. That’s what I did.”

I am afraid it’s not going to be that easy. This is Donwood. Every word is chosen. If he is leading you down a path of interpretation you can bet there is more to it. Lost Angeles is not a one-dimensional chastisement of modern materialistic culture.

It is important to remember, for example, that Lost Angeles arose from London Views, which arose as a reaction to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. That context brings new shades.

It’s also important to note that the plague on Hollywood is a religious one of fire and flood, and that the blind faith of the supernatural and extra-terrestrial is depicted in the meteor shower. These are not absent-mindedly picked methods of destruction. Religion and faith and the power of these forces on humanity is a Donwood theme.

And you need to consider the importance of the visual referencing of the Nuremberg Chronicle, a medieval history of the world that was created in 1493.

These are only the more obvious paths of interpretation — look deeper into the 18ft canvas and you’ll find more references, more elements, more shades of meaning and context. Look into any work from Donwood and you will see how complex a seemingly simple image can be.

You see, just as Donwood’s life is a jigsaw of scraps of information and half-truths, his work, too, is always a jigsaw of influence and meaning and perception. Even when he seems to be helping you form an opinion, as with Lost Angeles, he is really only guiding you to certain pieces of the puzzle. The rest, you have to work out for yourself. Which in itself, in true Donwood fashion, is likely to be part of the message he is trying to get across.

Jon Severs 2013Jon Severs is a writer and freelance journalist.

Art in tHe BArStanley Donwood: Hollywood Dooom29.11.13 — 02.03.14

About Chapter Gallery

Chapter Gallery is an international art space that commissions, produces and presents contemporary visual and live art projects within a dynamic multi-artform venue in Cardiff, UK.

We offer an ambitious, challenging and wide-ranging programme of exhibitions, residencies, commissions and events by established Welsh and international artists.

Entrance to Chapter Gallery is always FREE.

To be kept up to date with exhibitions and events you can email us at visual.arts@chapter.org

Ynglŷn ag Oriel Chapter

Mae Oriel Chapter yn ofod celfyddydol rhyngwladol sy’n comisiynu, yn cynhyrchu ac yn cyflwyno prosiectau celfyddyd weledol gyfoes oddi mewn i ganolfan gelfyddydau aml-gyfryngol yng Nghaerdydd, Cymru, UK.

Rydym yn cynnig rhaglen uchelgeisiol, heriol ac amrywiol o arddangosfeydd, cyfnodau preswyl, comisiynau a digwyddiadau gan artistiaid cydnabyddedig o Gymru ac o bedwar ban byd.

Mae mynediad i Oriel Chapter yn RHAD AC AM DDIM bob amser.

I gael y wybodaeth ddiweddaraf am ein harddangosfeydd a’n digwyddiadau, e-bostiwch visual.arts@chapter.org

ChapterMarket Road, Cardiff CF5 1QE, UK Heol y Farchnad, Caerdydd CF5 1QE, UK +44 (0)29 2031 1050visual.arts@chapter.orgwww.chapter.org

/chaptergallery

Stanley Donwood: Hollywood Dooom29.11.13 — 02.03.14

Above: Stanley Donwood, Hollywood Dooom Front cover: Stanley Donwood, Hollywood Dooom (detail)