Yes we Kant!

Between January and October 2017 I was artist in residence at The Centre of Philosophy and Visual Arts, Kings College London, and attended a series of lectures lead by Dr John Callanan followed by a two-month period making art at Kunsthuis SYB, Netherlands. Yes we Kant! was the title for the resulting series of artworks which were influenced by the study of Immanuel Kant's 'Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals.' Building on my existing interest in what could be termed philosophically invested art and artistically invested philosophy, these were particularly stimulated by the fertile paradoxes in the deeper weave of Kant's rigorous account of the human creature's innate aptitude for a good will (an aptitude that I link to what I term 'artist substance') in correspondence to an ultimately unknowable Moral Law, paradoxes which, for the artist-reader, reveal the philosopher's rare aptitude for imaginative thought-form (echoed later in elements of 'The Critique of Judgement'). The final works for exhibition at Kunsthuis re-contextualise the archetypal modus operandi of the artist - painting - as a critical form of thinking in its own right and the painter as a critical form of agency. Side stepping the actual use of paint, I produced intricate drawings on large stretches of canvas and canvas aprons which reference out dated modes of making by hand in order to suggest a capacity in the human being to become 'ontologically carved' as a result of practices of engagement with the world, a process of expression which is nonetheless totally invisible and 'out of our hands.' These works are accompanied by 'unused' paintbrushes which I term 'will sticks' to make a correlation between artist substance, ethical imagination and Kant's notion of the good will. I created an associated performance lecture, Kant Paint, Won't Paint!, which was presented at the exhibition opening. Agnes Winter wrote about these works (and those of fellow resident artist Siobhan Tatton) for the gallery's website in an essay 'The Craft of Thinking.' Diagram on Behalf of Artist Substance I was later shown again at (Jan-Feb 2018) at a group show, 'Art and Philosophy - CPVA Resident Artists' curated by the Centre for Philosophy and Visual Art at, The Arcade Gallery, Kings College London) along with a new work on canvas, The Robe of the Guardians.