Summer Show, Merchant House Gallery

   Foam-born, painted wood and copper tubing, h,70cm, 2015

I will be showing new work in the Summer Show at the Merchant House Gallery in Lowestoft.

18th July - 22nd August, open Tuesdays and Thursday - Saturday, 11am - 4pm.

102 High Street, Lowestoft, NR32 1XW.

www.merchanthousegallery.co.uk

 

 

Inanna, radiant Queen of Heaven and Earth

  

Above: Inanna, Mesopotamia, Old Babylonian period c 2000-1600BC, baked clay, 11.9x6.6cm, Paris Louvre AO 12456

Musician with harp, Mesopotamia Ur III period, c 2100-1800BC, baked clay, 7.3x8.5cm, Paris Louvre, AO 12454

Inanna in Ruin, Bronze, 27x34x15.5cm, 1991



"The musicians play for the queen:
They play the loud instrument which drowns out the southern storm,
They play the sweet algar-instrument, the ornament of the palace,
They play the stringed instrument which brings joy to all the people,
They play songs for Inanna to rejoice the heart."
from "Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth" by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer
 
Jude Lockie gave me this glorious book as a present in 1986.  The story of Inanna dates back to the ancient Sumerians who lived in the alluvial valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, in what is now southern Iraq.  This land was first peopled in the 5th millennium BC by settlers who lived in villages, farmed, wove, worked leather, metal and clay.  By the 3rd millenium the culture of these people was fused with the incoming Sumerians to create an urban culture often referred to as "the cradle of civilisation".  They were a literary people with a cuneiform script which developed from pictographic to phonetic signs. The were technically advanced and enjoyed a rich visual and musical culture.  They also had advanced concepts of law and justice, with a law code and legal documents which have been excavated. I was fascinated by the Sumerians when I first learnt about them at school.

So I devoured this glorious book narrating the stories and hymns of Inanna, the great Sumerian goddess, so rich in wisdom, joy and humanity.  Inanna descends to the underworld where she is strippped of all her powers and hung on a hook like a corpse.  She is rescued by creatures, neither male nor female, that entered the gates underworld like flies, slipping through the cracks.  The win the gratitude of the Queen of the Underworld, Ereshkigal by displaying empathy - when she moans of her sufferiings  "Oh! Oh! My inside!", they repeat "Oh! Oh! Your inside!" and continue in this vein until Ereshkigal moved by these creatures sighing with her agrees to let them take the corpse of Inanna which they revive by sprinkling upon it the water of life.

I have always loved that passage, along with the moment when a fly appears to help her find her love, Dumuzi.  The fly bargains first, however, and Inanna says "If you tell me, I will let you frequent the beer houses and taverns.  I will let you dwell among the talk of the wise ones.  I will let you dwell among the songs of the minstrels."  The fly is blessed in its intimacy with human beings.  Everything is blessed by glorious Inanna and the people feast, dance and sing with joy in her honour.

And now we have these strange child-men smashing up the ancient wonders of Mesopotamia, the beautiful sculptures and reliefs that inspire with wonder.  There is nothing manly in their actions - you can observe in their movements and carriage how infantile they feel to attack defenceless objects with sledge hammers, drills and explosives, witnesses to the spirituality of our ancestors that no previous regime or invade has considered destroying.  But these are people of the Word and the Word progresses easily to the sword and to negation, as we know  from our own Christian heritage.  The Word serves authority well, in division and controlling creed.The ISIS men are carrying out a cultural war along with the slaughter of civilians.  And of course they are seeking to shock - publicity is all in this digitally connected world.  Whether you are an artist of the democratic west, or a soldier of radical Islam, your 'products' need to be commodified for public consumption.  Sensational and scandalous news bites are the most successfully and rapidly  distributed.  It is all so depressingly mindless - the vandalism of cultural brigands.

Like so many others, I feel unbearable grief to see such beauty created by the great civilisations of the past recklessly destroyed for momentary stuntmanship.  Future generations will never have the opportunity of being inspired by these ancient works.

Communard

Girl, watercolour, 2015

I was shocked to learn that between 21-28 May 1871, during the Paris Commune, the national army slaughtered as many as 25,000 civilians and combatants (London Review of Books, 2 July, 2105, Philippe Marliere).  On behalf of the National Assembly the army used "machine guns to perform mass executions. Hatred of the proletariat, and a determination to avenge humiliation at the hands of the Prussians, prevailed among the army's officers.  The Versaillais regarded the Communards as common criminals or worse - 'vermin', 'beasts', 'wild animals' - and were bent on 'purifying' the streets of Paris." 

The Communards, these vermin, promoted equality for women and established a Women's Union. They were committed to universal democracy and free, compulsory and secular education for all children, whatever their social background. They believed in international republicanism, not nationalism.  They set up the Artists' Federation with the aim of "free expression of art, released from state control and privilege".

The use of the term 'proletariat' is shocking.  I had to look it up to remind myself what exactly it  means - the lowest social or economic class of a community - different from our dignified 'working class', which refers to the class of people who work, especially manually, for wages. Different also from 'plebian', a member of a lower class of society (not necessarily the lowest), used by the elite as an insult suggesting coarse and uneducated.

I'm often told not to use the term 'working class' any more as it no longer applies to our society.  I suppose in view of the dismantling of our manufacturing base and heavy industry generally, there could be some justification for saying that the opportunity to join a significant workforce undertaking manual labour, skilled or unskilled, for wages is no longer very prevalent and the culture created by this workforce is disappearing. The service industry is hardly the same, even if it provides a wage. 

But on the same day as reading the article on the Paris Commune of 1871, I heard the term 'underclass' used on the radio, and also 'the great unwashed', the latter no doubt used ironically.  Even so, It is ominous.  Luckily, from my experience, the communities that remain in what were industrial 'working class' locations are rich in wise, intelligent, pragmatic and resilient people whose humanity is pretty free of sentimentality. The assumption is that the less they are valued, the more excluded or deprived of opportunity, the more likely they are to turn to the xenophobia and resentment facilitated by right wing media and politics.  But perhaps there is a more optimistic lesson in the aspirations and long-lasting influence of the Communards.