Showcase: Flo Gordon

All my work is a stew. Here are the ingredients:

* 200g Humour/Subconscious Humour A lot of my work has sprouted from an aversion to this statement: ‘Instinctive humour does not exist.’ I think it does. Evidence for my belief would be: objects wiggling and the way in which orange is funnier than grey. Eggs (specifically fried eggs) are inexplicably amusing too.
I believe we often misinterpret the pleasure that we experience when viewing an artwork as joy instead of finding it funny on a basic level. Freud’s Relief theory of humour states that laughter is a physical release of tensions built up by sub-conscious sexual desires triggered by conscious or subconscious associations to sex. The humour I believe in draws from the opposite, more naive end of the spectrum. Humour can be found in colour combination, irregular shapes, challenged symmetry or even the banal and utterly bland.

* 3 tbsp Colour When I was a child I learned to cross my eyes. I crossed my eyes whenever I could so that details would disappear and colours would radiate.

* 1 tsp ‘The Useless’ I enjoy ‘degrading’ my work. Most art is completely ‘useless’ and I wish to highlight this. But it is the useless that connects us to raw spirit as it embodies our need to be and do without cause.

* 50g Urges/Equality I would like the viewer to want to prod and squeeze. I tinker with installation so that the viewer connects with the space through intuitive sensory understanding as opposed to calculated logic. You knew all this anyway.

During my Degree Show I watched as a contemporary art collector, a mother of three (primary school teacher) and her children responded in exactly the same way towards my work, which meant a lot.

flo.gordon@hotmail.com
BA (Hons) Fine Art Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design.