Tom Loveday and Lisa Jones, Hiding in the Shadows

Five Walls Projects, 2022

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While this was not strictly a solo show, I think of it as such. Lisa and I worked together with a single idea to which we responded within our respective art practices. Also, in order to affirm our working together we chose quotes rather than theoretical essays to accompany the exhibition.

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For Lisa Jones:

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And who would not be inspired to take his departure if his words could strike to the heart of Berlin, as Hessel does with his Muses from Magdeburger Strasse? “They have long since vanished. Like quarry stones they stood there decorously holding their ball or pencil, those that still had hands. Their white, stone eyes followed our footsteps, and the fact that these heathen girls gazed at us has become part of our lives.”

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And: “We see only what looks at us. We can do only… what we cannot help doing.” The philosophy of the flâneur has never been more profoundly grasped than in these words of Hessel’s.

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Walter Benjamin, The Return of the Flâneur, in (Michael W Jennings et al eds), Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 2, Part 1, 1927-1930, Belknap Press and Harvard University, 1999, p. 265.

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Lisa's works:

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Lisa Jones, Beneath our feet, 2020 – 2021, Pencil on 360gsm Khadi paper, 30 x 30 cm to 56 x 56 cm.

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For Tom Loveday:

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Short Shadows. Towards noon, shadows are no more than sharp, black edges at the feet of things, preparing to retreat silently, unnoticed, into their burrow, their secret being. Then, in its compressed, cowering fullness, comes the hour of Zarathustra – the thinker in “the noon of life,” in “the summer garden.” For it is knowledge that gives things their sharpest outline, like the sun at its zenith.

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(Walter Benjamin, 1929, in Michael W Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith, Editors, Walter Benjamin, selected writings Volume 2, part 1 1927-1930, Belknap Press, 2005, p. 272.)

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Look, it is coming, it is near, the great noon.

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(Zarathustra, in Friedrich Nietzsche (Adrian del Caro trans and ed and Robert Pippin ed), Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p 153.)

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My works:

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Tom Loveday, Dark Edge, 2022, 52 panels, synthetic polymer paint on heavy weight plastic tracing film, each panel 29.7 x 42 cm, overall dimensions variable.