INR Self portrait by Sydney Heighington
One of the key tenets of Intentism is ‘all meaning is the imperfect outworking of intention.’ This belief is visually interpreted in several ways, chiefly in Palimpsestism.
Although meaning finds its origin in intention, the author/artist and his or her biography has also be a source of inspiration for Intentists.
Author-Centricity is the artistic practice of producing artworks that are inspired by your biography.
Late Summers: Diary of a Creative Process by Charlotte Newman
Charlotte Newman is a freelance writer with an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway and her works have appeared in numerous publications such as The London Magazine, the Reflex Press Anthologies and Popshot.
For this piece Charlotte has collated extracts from her various works and presented them in a book. Amongst the pages, she has slotted bookmarks. These contain ‘diary entries’; stray thoughts that she noted whilst writing and which have finally found a home. ‘Late Summers: Diary of a Creative Process’ celebrates the fog between fact and fiction. It is hoped that it also demonstrates how mundanity may yield magic.
INR. Self portrait, photograph on glosspaper 16” x 20 ” and PSTstrips by Sydney Heighington.
(The following is taken from the Exhibition catalogue 2021)
I was born with a rare genetic condition that has caused a great deal of physical and mental pain throughout my life – my art is my way of understanding and coping, it is the way in which I share my experience. By exploring my condition and sharing this with the viewer, I aim to make a true connection between myself, my art and the viewer. A connection I believe that has been lost through the rise of New Criticism and Post Modernism.
My work is autobiographical in nature, and requires the viewer to consciously connect with me as the artist to broaden their understanding of the work’s true meaning. I often use palimpsest to show my creative trail, leaving in conscious markings to highlight my process.
The self-portrait is captured moments after I have taken a blood sample to check my ‘international Norms Ratio’ (the rate at which my blood coagulates.) The image is a deeply personal look at my true self, scars and all. It is an intimate moment connecting the viewer and the subject through honesty. The nature of the self-portrait and the supporting sculpture/objects encourage the viewer to think about the meaning behind the work, using the clues to come to a conclusion closer to the true intention of the work as opposed to wrongfully interpreting the meaning. The remaining test strips and lancets are all kept from when my INR has been very low or very high. Moments that could cause serious health complications such as internal bleeding or blood clotting.
End of the Line, novella by Gideon Parry
Intentist Gideon Parry uses his experience of having worked on the London Underground to inspire his novel ‘End of the Line.’
The story is set in the 1990’s and centres on a comically strained relationship between Peregrine and his co-workers. What makes it most interesting for Intentists and author-centricity is that it is written in the second person. This grammatical decision from Gideon gives the story greater immediacy and has the effect of blurring the division between reader and authorial voice.
(See above for the video interview with Charlotte Newman where Gideon describes his intentions in writing.)
Pocket Lint
Pocket Lint is the moniker for musician Mark Heffernan. Pocket Lint used to be a member of the successful band Remodel. Remodel worked with other Intentists in various projects. These include a palimpsestic work named The Obscure Object called Desire which you can listen to under the Palimpsestic section of this website, and Intentist Vittorio Pelosi painting the album cover for ‘Statues.’
For the Intentist exhibition 2021 Pocket Lint set up a table where members of the public could choose a number at random which corresponded to the order of songs on Pocket Lint’s latest album. After listening to the chosen song, Pocket Lint facilitated a dialogue concerning meaning and intention behind the work.
Watch the video below of Pocket Lint speaking of the concept during the exhibition.
Confessional
Confessional is a re-working of an Intentist art piece by Vittorio and Luciano Pelosi and Sydney Heighington. The work was entitled ‘Confessional Tent’ and was somewhat of a satire on Tracey Emin’s ‘Everyone I have ever slept with.’ The original piece was a tent set up at the Brownstock music festival in Essex.
The re-working for the Intentist exhibition in 2021 used the same concept to demonstrate the innate desire for viewers to have interest in the artist.
Members of the public would privately enter a makeshift confessional booth. Inside was lit with candles and a confessional wall. The confessor would have to write a true confession anonymously and pin it to the wall. On exiting an Intentist would take their photograph but would not venture inside.
On a subsequent exhibition the confessions will be exhibited alongside the photograps. It is the Intentist position that viewers will naturally want to match a confession with a confessor.
Diary
‘Diary’ is a work by Vittorio Pelosi. In linguistics ‘register’ is the choice of lexis influenced by tenor, field and mode- which means who writes the text and to whom; the subject matter; and finally the vehicle as in written, spoken etc.
‘Diary’ is an investigation of these roles. If the field – infact the exact text is kept the same, but we vary the mode- would it influence the reader’s perception in its tenor.
The work itself comes from the polymath Stephen Fry. Fry has a great command of language and in interests and manner would make a great diarist in the mould of the 17th and 18th century. (Think of Samuel Pepys for example.) Fry is also a prolific use of twitter, which in msny ways is a modern form of a diary. However, the mode of Twitter and its constrictions outdoubtedly shape how we read his entries.
Therefore, Vittorio took six months of Fry’s tweets and wrote them out by hand with a dip pen in a leather bound journal. It is up to the reader to see if this change in mode affects our understanding of the text.
First and Second Slip
There is an argument among Intentionalusts that has been expressed in various ways. The argument is predicated on the assumption that intention imbues a thing with additional properties. For example, are a parrot’s words as significant as the same that were intentionally uttered to create meaning? Intentists have illustrated this point by comparing a hyper realistic painting of nature with nature itself. If nature is the sum of billions of years of blind chance, does it mean the same as an artist recreating it with motive and artistic intention?
The work entitled ‘First and Second Slip’ illustrates this. Here is a piece of ‘slip’ that has fallen off the artist’s work station and was about to be disposed of. However, Vittorio decided to take another piece of clay, add water andshape it to be very similar to the first. Visually they appear the same. However one is waste and the other was carefully shaped with creative intention to make a statement about intention. In sum, demonstrating that since the work appears to be the same and has the same physical properties, meaning here must be found outside the work (in the artist’s intention.) The fact that the artist has not disclosed which pieceof clay is which and it is imposdible to discern it from the work, makes the work more intriguing. N.B. The title is a pun on the name of scraps of clay and two fielding positions in cricket.
Snooper by Luciano Pelosi
‘Snooper’ is a written piece by Luciano Pelosi. Luciano wrote the piece as a creative experiment to see if the reader could not influence the meaning ‘outside the work’ (to borrow a phrase from Derrida), but actually within it. I.e. how could the reader be engaged in the textual narrative itself? Moreover, could this silent figure actually dictate the plot?
Below is a video with Luciano discussing the idea with Vittorio Pelosi.