Page 21 - Art First: Christopher Cook: a chance encounter on the way down

some kind of defining hallucination of our time and of the material world we are making
(and forced to observe being made). What I wrote first in my notebook was ‘If this
is a disaster, let’s look at it’. After talking with the artist he wrote to me, on the subject

of lightness: ‘The drawings see-saw on a dilemma: that lightness, however desirable,
is not always possible. To live lightly, without undue stress, may be desired, but we feel
that desire most acutely when working in situations where weight, and conscience,
cannot be avoided.’ The idea of living lightly represents neither withdrawal nor ambiva -

lence: his images are manifestly open to the excitement and complexity of our globalised [ ]
present. Perhaps it is the hint of a moral dimension in them that marks his work as Euro -
pean (or vestigially English) in his modes of openness to that present.

Ian Hunt is a writer and teaches in the Department of Art at Goldsmiths

an isolated event,
, graphite and oil on paper, x

cm