INSIGHT: Week 4 | Patrick Quarm

INSIGHT IS A NEW ONLINE PLATFORM PRESENTED BY PIPPY HOULDSWORTH GALLERY, DEBUTING WORK BY A DIFFERENT ARTIST EACH WEEK. NEW WORK MADE DURING LOCKDOWN WILL BE HIGHLIGHTED ALONGSIDE A VIDEO STUDIO VISIT PRESENTED BY THE ARTIST.

INSIGHT runs alongside the main gallery programme

Ming Smith: view here

INSIGHT: WEEK 4 | PATRICK QUARM

Patrick Quarm's practice explores identity, focusing on the notion of cultural hybridity. The artist takes his own experience as a starting point to examine the self as continuously evolving. Quarm, who grew up in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana, moved to America to study in Texas, and now lives in Detroit - three cities where the notions of Blackness, colonialism, and diaspora, are understood through different lenses. This journey has prompted him to examine identity in relation to place, understood by means of history, politics and cultural practices. Quarm describes his work as 'cultural archaeology', a process of excavation that uncovers layers of history and complicates its narrative. His paintings, comprising multiple layers of canvas, African print textile and paint, play with depth through processes of hanging, layering, cutting, painting and erasure.

The blue rose does not grow in the wild but is created artificially by adding dye to white roses. In some cultures, this flower symbolises mystery and a longing to attain the impossible. Drawing on this tradition, Quarm takes the blue rose as a metaphor for the transformation of the hybrid individual, someone who evolves through multiple cultures and becomes something new, whilst retaining a sense of their origins.

Partner paintings, Sons and Daughters of the Blue Rose present relaxed, informal portraits of a young boy and a young woman. Both figures are painted against a backdrop of vibrant African print fabric pasted onto the surface of the canvas. Large circles are cut into this front layer, revealing an underlayer painted with large blue roses and other flora. In addition to the background, the printed fabric makes up the boy's shorts and t-shirt, whilst areas of both figures' skin appears, in parts, erased or tattooed with pattern. African print fabric is a fundamental medium in Quarm's practice. The history of the textile, originating in Indonesia and coming to Africa as a result of imperialism and trade, initiates a dialogue on cultural evolution, functioning as a parallel metaphor to the blue rose.

In the artist's own words, the portraits are 'the descendants of the African evolving through space and time' - two young people that bear traces of continual growth and transformation. Adding, subtracting, fusing, and shadowing, Quarm's process creates and complicates a multitude of relationships between his subjects and their environment to consider cultural heritage, authenticity and the endless possibilities for self determination.

'One thing I notice is that when you talk about hybridity [in the U.S.], people think of that as an end point. Or when you're talking about history, people see it as a completed thing. For me, these things are constantly evolving. You're constantly evolving and growing into a new realm, a new reality, redefining who you are.'

Patrick Quarm, Alive Magazine, 2019