Susan Adams
www.susan-adams.co.uk
@susanjadams
Statement:
The title character in The Ha-Ha Man observes or delicately controls the machinations of human behaviour, with a particular emphasis on the despicable. Deep beneath the earth’s crust the Ha-Ha man works in a laboratory watching live recordings of blatant acts of selfishness and cruelty that amuse him. At particular moments he might twiddle a knob and turn up the heat on proceedings, and really make himself chortle.
Nothing has changed, everything has changed: the painting references a news photograph of David Cameron and Lex Greenhill in an echo of a detail from a Medieval doom painting. You can imagine little devils wielding forks over them as they sip tea around the campfire in Riyadh where they went to woo Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who had recently (reportedly) approved the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The human capacity for corruption and greed has remained unchanged for centuries, tolerated, denied, attacked, but there it remains.
The Ha-Ha Man is an enigmatic character created by Jo Mazelis within our creative correspondence; the letters fictioned worlds I am filling out through paintings, animations, sculpture. The Tivoli Fish Bar is a portal between the worlds, inspired by a fish bar where the young Mazelis worked where she had an experience of dissociation, a profound feeling of disconnection with oneself and the world around.
Both paintings depict underground worlds, descents into the unconscious, or meetings with archetypes that remain unchanged while the appearance of everyday life seems to ‘progress’ normally.
www.susan-adams.co.uk
@susanjadams
Statement:
The title character in The Ha-Ha Man observes or delicately controls the machinations of human behaviour, with a particular emphasis on the despicable. Deep beneath the earth’s crust the Ha-Ha man works in a laboratory watching live recordings of blatant acts of selfishness and cruelty that amuse him. At particular moments he might twiddle a knob and turn up the heat on proceedings, and really make himself chortle.
Nothing has changed, everything has changed: the painting references a news photograph of David Cameron and Lex Greenhill in an echo of a detail from a Medieval doom painting. You can imagine little devils wielding forks over them as they sip tea around the campfire in Riyadh where they went to woo Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who had recently (reportedly) approved the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The human capacity for corruption and greed has remained unchanged for centuries, tolerated, denied, attacked, but there it remains.
The Ha-Ha Man is an enigmatic character created by Jo Mazelis within our creative correspondence; the letters fictioned worlds I am filling out through paintings, animations, sculpture. The Tivoli Fish Bar is a portal between the worlds, inspired by a fish bar where the young Mazelis worked where she had an experience of dissociation, a profound feeling of disconnection with oneself and the world around.
Both paintings depict underground worlds, descents into the unconscious, or meetings with archetypes that remain unchanged while the appearance of everyday life seems to ‘progress’ normally.
Tivoli Fish Bar
150 x 120cm
Oil on canvas
2019
150 x 120cm
Oil on canvas
2019