Bright Expressions on a Dark Theme
SCMP Young Post Art Beat p.5, Friday, March 10, 2006
Hong Kong people, try to hide from death until they are forced to confront it, and then they struggle to deal with it,” he said.
But there’s nothing moralistic about his message. He describes the artistic process involved in these abstract works as “expressions on a theme.”
He says: “Art needs a certain amount of spontaneity. I can paint figuratively but it doesn’t express what I want. Abstract [painting] frees the mind from the constraints of everyday life.”
His choice of materials is also unconstrained – paint, crushed glass, canvases that are cut and moulded, household lacquer because it is “shiny” and “rich”, metal leaf and even petals.
Bookle was born and educated in Britain, but settled in Hong Kong in 1991. This is his second solo exhibition. He has been active in the local arts scene since he landed here, including the Hong Kong Youth Arts Festival.
He expressed a cautious hope for the local arts scene and young people wanting to build a career in the arts.
“Maybe the next generation will bring about a more mature art scene here, but it is unlikely to be government driven…people will have to do it themselves,” he said.
“It takes parental backing to allow a student to pursue art as an educational choice, but if you are really committed, you will find a way. Teenagers don’t need a studio to work in – you can just work in your bedroom.”
The Color of Energy
kee, issue number fourteen, Spring 2005, p.29-31.
The opening night of Gerard Bookle’s exhibition SuperNature at Sin Sin Fine Art was more like a fabulous party than an artist’s first solo exhibition. Virginia Ngai meets up with Gerry, as he is known to his friends, to discuss his sweet tooth and love of vivid colours.
A walk into “SuperNature” is an undoubted assault on the senses. The amazingly vibrant colours leap off their canvasses almost inducing whiplash as they seduce the viewer into trying to take in all the paintings at once. It’s several days before the opening night of Gerard Bookle’s first solo exhibition and the animated artist is whizzing around the gallery trying to decide which pieces fits best where.
A wide grin spreads over the artist’s face as he welcomes friends excitedly into the gallery. “Come on in and take a look around. You simply must see the works before the opening!” says Bookle proudly. Gazing around the three rooms in the gallery, one can see that Bookle certainly has a reason to be proud of his work. All his pieces are uplifting and one cannot help but admire the energy in the pieces. N one particular sculpture-like piece, a mass of white pedals is stuck onto a block of fabric. The way that the petals are placed creates an impression of movement and the viewer can easily picture the block having been carved from a lake where petals rained down on its surface.
When asked for the title of this piece, Bookle replies that it is simply called cake. This answer gives clues as to the key to the popularity of the artist’s work, even before it has gone on public exhibition. Bookle’s pieces can be interpreted in many ways and admired from different points of view. Looking at the piece initially, the viewer gets an impression of one thing but the title suggestively and simultaneously plays another idea in the mind.
Being the youngest of his family by eight years, Bookle has always enjoyed “playing with paint.” He was immensely interested in arts and crafts but never thought much about his talent. It wasn’t until he won a prize at school for art when he was eight years old that he “caught on that he might have some talent in art. Says Bookle, “I was never too interested in the academic side of school and I was fortunate to have extremely supportive parents who told me to go with my heart and do what I wanted to do.”
When Bookle moved to Hong Kong in the early 1990s, he was commissioned mainly to do decorative art for restaurants and bars and many of his works can be seen in prominent venues around the city. However, fine art has always remained his passion. “From the very start, fine art was what I wanted to do. Whilst I gained a reputation in the decorative art field, having so many jobs simply meant that I’d have to ire staff and do a lot of administrative work, which I really didn’t want to do. When the economy crashed, there were a lot less decorative jobs and that allowed e to take a step back and re-evaluate what I really wanted to do. I got pushed out of my comfort zone and it gave me a chance to reappraise what my passion was. I realised that I didn’t want to keep doing what clients wanted me to do and instead wanted to paint what came from inside of me.”
Bookle’s artwork employs a unique mixture of media ranging from gesso to car paint. “By using a single medium, I can’t get the effect I want. I need my work to have a lot of energy and strong colours but limiting myself to one medium won’t give me that effect,” states Bookle. “As a result, I mix media like pure acrylic with varnish to achieve a glossy sheen to my work. I also choose not to use a soft canvas but instead experiment with painting on hard surfaces like metal, wood and glass. A lot of my works are lacquered which cannot be done if it were on a soft canvas. Using so many different types of materials also allows me to be more creative. I don’t want to have a show where every painting is the same thing repeated over and over again.”
Because Bookle works with so many different media, he doesn’t need to be particularly inspired when working. “Often I’m just playing with paint and mixing it up much like a kid making a mess with his colours, then suddenly, I’ll have an idea. I want all my work to have a lot of energy and there’s no better way to do it tat through bold colours. At other times, however, I go into the studio with a theme in mind.” Bookle points to a piece entitled celebration. “I got that idea from an old man who sells lai see packets in Causeway Bay. As time passed by, I would see packets having faded due to exposure to the sun. It provoked me to create this piece and I used bleach to achieve the faded effect.”
Like a true artist, Bookle feels unfulfilled if he is not painting. “It’s something that has to come out of me,” he states. “There’s always something that visually excites me and there’s nothing like getting it out and creating something. As I said, some of my works are unplanned and I can lock myself in the studio one day in a mad working fits and surprise myself with what emerges at the end.”
The conversation turns to the title of his exhibition, SuperNature. “People often see organic formations in my works,” states Bookle. “It’s not international on my part but for some reason people will see flowers or other organic things in the paintings. So I saw this as a way of creating a form of synthetic nature. My work is kind of poppy and it’s a bit of exaggeration of nature per se. And besides it’s the title of an old 70s disco song that I love,” he adds with a mischievous grin.
Bookle’s playful nature shows through not only in his painting but also in the names of each work. Like cake, many of his painting’s names provoke an alternate response to the initial viewing of his works. Titles such as the bars of mars and finding my milky way on a starry starry night are suggestive of scenes from a Willy Wonkaesque confectionary store. Bookle laughs when this analogy is made. “I’ve got a very sweet tooth and I guess it shows in my work,” he admits/ “I also like to play around with words. For some reason, I just like the sound of the word cake and wanted to use it. And when I saw my sculpture piece I just thought white chocolate cake, and there it is!”
- Virginia Ngai
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