Brian Deighton + G Calvert
As 2 artists who have lived together for over 30 years we have been careful to respect the boundaries and autonomy of each other’s practice. We don’t usually work collaboratively, but in considering how to work together, it became inevitable that the subject of the work had to be ourselves.
The 2 black and white photographs are of us on our first date – outside the Museum of the Revolution in Moscow in 1988. The coloured image in the book is Georg Baselitz’s painting, ‘The Great Friends’.* The painting that forms the background is by G Calvert from around 1993 and shows myself and a double image of our daughter as toddler.
In our individual art practice and as a couple we have unavoidably come up against our own vulnerabilities and discomforts. We have found that we recognise ourselves, with compassion, in the figures of ‘The Great Friends’. This couple, standing, looking out, expose their wounds and dishevelled-ness in a ruined landscape. They are what Baselitz calls ‘New Types’, imperfect, damaged but hopefully, honest.
I have superimposed a grid of white circles. This is a device I’ve used since about 2007 and represents simultaneously both an openness and a defensive barrier.
*Georg Baselitz, The Great Friends, 1965, 250cm x 300cm, Museum Ludwig, Cologne
– Brian Deighton
G Calvert’s photograph shows a fleeting image of Brian Deighton across her painting, ‘The Mick Molloy’.* She appears within a corner of Brian’s abstract colour grid.
Collaboration, not as any kind of merging but as standing alongside together.
to believe – B constructs it. to engage – G has to find it.
the wall the mirror the one off click caught not planned
The brick wall, seen through the kitchen mirror, where we informally display our art, becomes the site of battles over class gender and cultural leftovers, we negotiate art ego family and home.
*Mick Molloy’s face is the ‘hard square face of a suited man drenched in a burgundy and black background. Blood red streams fade on his face and his angled eyes stare into nowhere, full of yearning or perhaps despair.’ (Helen Ellis in Red Pepper 1996)
– G Calvert
Brian Deighton briandeighton.co.uk @briandeighton.art
G. Calvert riversideartistsgroup.com/artists/g-calvert @g.calvert.images