Dexter Dalwood

Originally published in This much is certain by the Royal College of Art, edited by Claire Bishop, London, 2004. ISBN 1874175624

1974

he documentary we are watching reveals David Bowie moving restlessly from one creative approach and persona to another. Cracked Actor traces Bowie in another stage of development. Ziggy has fled. Aladdin Sane is dead. This is the Thin White Duke. At times Bowie is confident in his artistic vision, at other times he talks in solemn riddles. Bowie writes his lyrics using Burroughsinspired cut-ups. The camera lets us commune with a moment of construction. It gives us a backstage pass. Hotel room. Green room. Sigma Sound Studio. We witness before the event. Before the stage show.

A hotel room in Philadelphia. A mesmeric character is seated on a pastel chaise longue. He pours over some handwritten lyrics. His pale, chiselled cheekbones exude extreme elegance. A sculpted shirt with pointed collars enhances his actions as he takes a pair of scissors to the text. Snipping randomly, the lyrics disintegrate. They fall into a heap of language. Plucking arbitrary fragments from the pile, our writer begins over. We watch as a new song is written. Words, phrases, syntax and meter are freed to forge new associations.

ooking at Dexter Dalwoods collages we are privy to the scene where intrinsic decisions are made and planned. Before painting. They are modest sites where elusive locations are constructed. Intimate connections are fired from printed matter and art historical reproductions. They combine, as if, to produce stills from a twentieth century historical movie. We know the plot. We know the cast. Gorbachev. Brian Jones. Michael Jackson. Sharon Tate. Do we know the set and location? Dalwood scouts these locations from our collective imagination. Fuelled from biography and the speculation of popular

Alun Rowlands

Dexter Dalwood

mythology, he details spaces set for potential drama. But, unlike Bowie in Cracked Actor, our main protagonists are absent. They have stepped out. They are off set. We are left to project our imagination into the assemblage of metonymic accoutrements. Props drawn from a myriad of sources collide in a fastidious montage. The resulting collages initiate the details of lodestone images, like single frames from our movie. Dalwood is seated splicing and cutting from the reelto-reel of history. The collages he creates are single image cells prior to their projection onto the big screen of painting.

sleepovers have dragged the privacy of this haven into litigation and the public courts.

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his cut and paste episode recalls early cinematography and montage. Here the jump cut and freezeframe fold into traditional ideas of collage. Visual impressions succeed one another. They overlap in a string of shots. Time becomes solvent. Collage guarantees contemporaneity. It is rooted in a modernist strategy for bringing the actual into art. It ties art to the moment. In Dalwoods hands it ties second

e are behind the wheel, cruising the freeway towards downtown L.A. There is something disconcertingly familiar here. We get the title. White Bronco (2001). We are O.J. Simpson mid-flight. Check the mirror. A helicopter hovers. News corporations track our escape. Their dramatic birds-eye view of the freeway is the one we really remember. Dalwood wittily pastes us front seat. We become complicit with the scene of the crime. The rear-view mirror reinforces this wide-screen experience. The sun is setting behind us but ahead is only blue sky. The drama is told through multiple voices. As the elements of the collage snap together we shift in time. Ahead, Los Angeles appears as a two dimensional mirage. Behind, Ed Ruschas iconic Hollywood sign recedes. Are we fleeing art history or do the objects in the rear-view mirror appear closer than they are?

elebrity is a current obsession. Fan bases are swelling. Images and personas are projected into our social consciousness. Empathy is laced with nefarious desire. Celebrity worship syndrome, or mad icon disease, is a recognised psychological condition. Media fractures identity. The language of the fanzine is often quasi-religious. It is all ritual and worship. The congregation communes in front of their televisions. The second coming will be peak-time viewing.

Text. Interpretation. Context. The script was already written. The precise context and interpretation were variable. The vagaries of translation aptly reside within the seams of Dalwoods collages. magine Ulrike Meinhof seated at her desk. Reading Che Guevaras Guerilla Warfare. The hip Baader-Meinhof gang translated the guerrilla theories of Guevara and Marighella into their West German context. They converted a manual for warfare in one of the worlds poorest countries into a manual warfare in one of the richest. A lot was lost in translation. In Ulrike Meinhofs Bed-sit (2000) and Che Guevaras Mountain Hideaway (1999) Dalwood reveals clandestine spaces fomenting revolutionary zeal. A hessian bivouac is swiftly assembled through jarring cut-up

order material to fragments of history. Like the classic Hollywood clich of falling calendar pages, spinning clocks and newspaper headlines, Dalwood forges a rolling dialogue between the past and the present. This allows us to consider the glasnost of Gorbachevs Winter Retreat (2000) through the lenses of Cezanne and hard-edged abstraction, in a visual perestroika. An apercu of the collaged image reveals the haunted autonomy of the fragment. Spliced magazine pages are displaced to act as other spaces. The parts retain a measure of their strangeness. But then this is useful when articulating a world that is not exactly reassuring and becoming stranger. alwoods promiscuous intermingling of signs allows an adolescent moment of freedom to imagine. Neverland (Michael Jacksons Bedroom) (1999) is the Prince of Pops private domain. Fame and power coalesce in baroque camp. A soft-toy innocence is implied amidst the opulence we associate with MTVs Cribs. Domesticity is hot. Perhaps it is a validation of the American dream. But beware. Our tabloid press has sensationally written the script for this stage. Slumber parties and

eventy-seven acres of Texan farmland dominated the 24-hour news channels in 1993. We watched from the perimeter as the Branch Davidian ranch was held under siege. In Mount Carmel, Waco (2000) Dalwood takes us inside. The serene interior echoes Matisses Dominican chapel in Vence. A utilitarian hardwood altar sits in its own fractured space. The cut edges of the printed components fissure, suggesting an impending implosion. The ceiling fan warns us that things are about to hot up. Outside this enclave the clouds gather. Dalwood has replaced the ranks of the ATF forces and film crews with a pastoral landscape that evokes Andrew Wyeth. This shift in our frame of reference is a subtle one. Art history provides the backdrop. The armed forces are substituted by a representation of nature as a moral force. Wyeths pioneering scenes identify with nationalism, transcendental populism and rehearsed settled values. These references butt-up against the assembled belief system depicted inside Mount Carmel. avid Koresh, who changed his name from Vernon Howell to enhance his image as a lead guitarist, constructed his vision from a variety of Biblical sources that he put into practice in Waco.

Alun Rowlands

Dexter Dalwood

Alun Rowlands

Dexter Dalwood

collage. The National Geographic landscapes stand in for Bolivian isolation. Preparing for war should be a complete ascetic. By contrast, Ulrike Meinhofs compact dwelling is replete with Bauhaus furniture and stripped timber entresol. We can only imagine the BMWBaader-Meinhof Wagen- parked out front. A large poster of Marx hangs on a red wall. He has a looming presence. Dalwood gives us a visual reminder of the power in recycled images of revolution. This is, perhaps, a tense sub-plot in Dalwoods work. lot. Sub-plot. Intrigue. Everyone, and everything, implicitly bound to grand narratives and specific ideologies. Exhausted political systems, tired revolutionary ideals, empty zealous doctrines mingle with fading stars, rock mythology and a lamentable Modernism. Dalwood promotes this collusion within his work. It is an implicit provocation. Scissors in hand we can quote Clyfford Stills dour, insalubrious work that he described himself as life and death merging in fearful union. Pasting it into the tragedy of Brian Jones poolside suicide, we can reify the mood at the end of the summer of love. Dalwoods work manifests these diverse moments of rupture. He relies on relativism in matters of time and space. His collages emerge as an apt form to initiate a discussion about the seismic events and decisions of the twentieth century. Their evocation permits entertaining historical slippage. We slide into the cracks of fact, code and style. The seam versus the seamless. Our visual pleasure is derived from the shock recognition of these seams. We take off on lines of flight, making arboreal connections. At times our collective memory, the movie we constantly re-run, snaps into focus. And, for a fleeting moment, we become acutely aware of our place within the pattern of things.

1. Che Guevaras Mountain Hideaway (1999) 2. Mount Carmel, Waco (2000) 3. Ulrike Meinhofs Bed-sit (2000) 4. Brian Jones Swimming Pool (1999)

Alun Rowlands

Dexter Dalwood