FROM CHRIS MULLEN, 3.5.24

We chatted about work and life Friday 3 May 2024 in which you sat in the magisterial chair. The need to hit an agreed pace of thought and work required me to write in detail to you both, and also take a good opportunity to show off my universal knowledge. .

1. Generally I was surprised you are leaving so much of your cogitation in your head without committing it to paper. There is just too much swirling around in there for precise planning to be available when needed. Write a description of the way the concert impacted on you (and Polly), no matter how brief. It may jolt you into further detail (eg projected texts, lighting, travel etc) There will be a necessity to recall observations about your day to day experiences, your reading, your observations.

2. We reflected on the sources of your work generated from your mother’s recorded voice and agreed that the Tomb project would almost certainly break new ground. You spoke incisively about the Seagull Triptych, as a visualisation of a dramatic and unexpected experience, an event with visceral impact on you, and outside the usual range of iconographic options. One aside made an impact on me – that in visualising German domestic life before 1936, you felt it powerfully that you were looking into the face of Violence, of Danger, of Evil. This seemed to me to possibly energise TOMB. It gave rise to our discussion of certain films. See beneath

3. In the past you had a certainty of progress in anticipated paintings, working from a general purpose. In a collaboration, it is important to avoid the impression of separate if parallel tracks to completion. I tried to reassure you that it was perfectly possible for you to embark on a generality (that was the main purpose of the way I wrote the project). Most disquieting might be your feeling that time is slipping away and you need a firm timetable. You must be patient ambling round the foothills of this project, enjoying formal and informal speculation where exactly you are with the project. You seemed in the past to be open to possibilities of intuition, so no difference here, except in collaboration, both of you will be breaking new ground.

(RESEARCH SUGGESTIONS RETURN TO FIRST SCREEN)