Nick Malone
‘Sketchbooks I’ (above) shows a double-page spread of Eustace’s thoughts on taking the Trans-Siberian Express from Moscow to Perm, with a cut window looking through to the simultaneous poetry and visions of Eustace in ‘Sketchbooks II’ (below), which looks in turn back to the ‘everyday’ world of Eustace in ‘Sketchbook I’
‘Windows’ cut into the canvas in the studio and gallery installations above and below operate in a similar way to the sketchbooks, allowing views into different worlds.
I would like to develop a form of ‘history’ painting, in the broadest sense of the word, where different ways of seeing, in both the past and present, can open and co-exist side by side. For example, the Battle of Omdurman, when in 1898 a British force under General Kitchener defeated an army of Dervishes under the Mahdi, offers huge visual possibilities - the colours of the different cultures, combatants, flags and animals. Yet the issues are highly contemporary - the speeches of the Mahdi are almost identical to those of Osama Bin Laden, and one wonders to what extent 9/11 was a consequence of the blood of the Dervishes sinking into the sands of the Sudan.
