Art which places you here........

In this world we inhabit where people are continually labelling and categorising everything and everybody. Where lists of the top ten or bottom ten are spread across our cultural radars. Where the omniprescent use of the sound byte indicates the perceived average attention span of the viewer or audience or congregation. Where influences are cited and homage equates with plagiarism. This image stands out. Borrowed off the Tate Britain web site this painting places Simon Patterson in the constellation of his own individual universe.

Is it reasonable to think of it as a directional mapping leading to a referenced framework from which something (or anyone) may emerge. There is no visible named linkage between the artist and his painting - no explanations of how or why or where decisions were made; no naming of names in any expected order. He gives no criteria to elucidate his choices. He grants no special favours towards his viewer or chooses one line above another. He offers the flat surface of the classic Underground plan and subverts it into something much much more. It is titled The Great Bear, a major constellation in the night sky that with the relevant astronomical knowledge would allow any traveller in a particular place to know where he is. It is, however far more than merely a signpost or a compass.

Neither is it an anonymous image. It does reveal the shadow of the artist because it conveys a sense of personal identity both by and within the dramatis personae he uses and chooses. Each individual is selected, and positioned by the artist working, in effect as an individual himself therefore if his shadow is not visible then his presence still subtly haunts the building. The image conveys within it the idea of contemporaneity (NOW) and of [wanted and unwanted] heritage (THEN) delineating the past and the present along a linear sense of directional historical value(s). It is also geographical both in its spatiality - mapping routes and/or combinations that could lead to different universes of collaborative interaction and in the variety and numerous nationalities depicted. This is not simply a white anglo saxon or masculine only construct.

Simon Patterson in this painting has created a mind map which can answer the ultimate question What is the meaning of life ? This artwork serves to define and direct the viewer to a place where it is impossible to arrive at. The journey of life, moving continuously and continually towards its close with no idea of where we are going. This image can reveal places where influences interact and significance (signification) is given a measurement as a point along a pointless scale and the viewer, lost in a world of free will and opportunity is free to position himself. For those of us - the silent majority, unnoticed and unappreciated - without that fickle dusting of celebrity are able to imagine where we reside, not on the lines but in the blankness between them.

Even from the distance of 2007 its relevance can miraculously carry on growing in meaning the viewer can with imagination extend the given lines along existing networks or create new ones to encompass new influences and dynamics. The viewer would be able to include the modern greats and not-so-greats that have since burst into life so that this image will effectively become one immortal web. This idea, born in the image, still can and does illustrate the world to the world. All it requires is for the viewer to place his mark upon it; shouting or murmuring, scribbling or spraying, using a big red arrow or a miniscule footnote, the slogan I AM HERE....