Drew Connor Holland
three drafts of the same poem25 November – 9 December 2023
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Nasha is pleased to present three drafts of the same poem, a solo presentation by Drew Connor Holland.
When I was asked to describe these works I saw them as a reformation of heartbreak— symbols of an alchemic spiritual repentance eroded over time. The Lutherian sensibility reframes things. How might one heartbreak look after a thousand years of merciful transformation? How would an archaeologist understand the notes app? How would my search history make someone feel in the deep future? There are three series of works in this show and I consider all of them to be, in a manner of speaking, forgeries; the archives of me or you once we turn to dust. Each faux relic conjures some ontological response, a desire to ascertain what place it had within a lineage of time as if part of a speculative history.
Forgeries of Medieval devotional artworks were generated with confessional AI prompts to make an image of scorned lovers or lonely angels and transferred to birch panels with office supplies. Forgeries of silver relics were made from used RTB01 sprues from 1987 — the first plastic productions of Space Marines from Warhammer 40,000 — cast in silver coins gifted to me by my estranged Grandfather and studded with precious gemstones. Forgeries of video game screenshots were transferred onto canvas offcuts and painted over, un-finishing them into still lives, landscapes or portraits, yellowed as if discovered in an attic or cellar. Forgery here has a double meaning. On one hand, it has the implication of hollowness— a facsimile with value incomparable to the original thing. On the other they are forgeries of prescient objects from an indiscernible time, (could it be 100 years ago or 1000 years ago?), forged alchemically from digital sources, forged in the same way a rock becomes a sword.
When I was young I used to hold fragments of smoothed glass on the beach and imagine what messages a broken bottle could carry. ‘Anemoia’: a nostalgia for a time or place one has never known. An amalgam of the Ancient Greek forms of ‘wind’ and ‘mind’, it draws from the imagery of anemosis — a tree warped so badly during a storm that it seems to bend itself backwards. Painting — that eternal thing — is alchemic in its conversion of immediacy (the battle, the indecision, the erasure, the doubt) into the forever. How else can I put this? How can I fake being loved? How do we fake a smile? Every
time I meet someone who asks me how I’m doing, I respond with “my best”. Recently I’ve used “radically okay”. Well, we live in a society! We have to resolve this state of flux, accept that void between good and bad. There are three drafts of the same poem in my notes app: I look back, somebody is there, they go away.
– Jonno Revanche
