'Coombes emphasises the entrenched political, cultural and class connotations of the traditional media that he works in. Stiff, pragmatic oil painting is harnessed to the exhausted mores of the tweeded aristocracy. The fluid eroticism of Baroque painting is applied to the svelte creases of an urban folk devil's dog-eared leather jacket'. (Neil Mulholland)
Henry Coombes (*1977, London) is one of the six artists selected to represent Scotland at the 52nd Venice Biennale this summer. Originally trained in film, he uses oil paint, watercolour and film to produce apparently familiar and comfortable imagery which on closer inspection reveals itself to be of dark and subversive subject matter. For Jenny Brownrigg, curator of Black Button, his recent solo show at the Cooper Gallery, Dundee, through a 'skewed collusion of medium, narrative and situation' Coombes attempts to trap 'grotesque truths' defined by Coombes as 'the truths that evade us everyday - they dance with an eager energy that skips and jerks around conclusion and opinion and the vile habit of summary''.1 The making of the work is intensely private, a difficult and often uncomfortable act: 'Making becomes the stage for a one-man performance to an audience of one, where the act of making lets in the emotive forces that I must obey, or avoid like a coward and pay the price with a sick burp of mediocrity and a wretch of guilt onto my pale knees; every day I am in the studio covered by this bile'.2
His degree show at Glasgow School of Art in 2002, for which he was awarded the prestigious Newbery Prize, was an exploration of the family portrait, taking Victorian photographs as the starting point. Based on a surreal interpretation of childhood memories, the installation referenced dog breeding, class, history, paternity, family heirlooms, and notions of pedigree and family history. Coombes awkwardly cast himself in the picture, creating video images of himself as a balding patriarch in the making and, quite disturbingly, as a pair of identical twins clothed in Victorian lace. He said, 'the idea was to give life back to dead objects through the creative process. The people in the photos are locked in an eternal present and denied a past or a future'. Critic Moira Jeffrey noted it's 'singular, creepy eloquence that won't leave you alone'.3
Various animals recur, in particular the figure of the faithful yet highly repressed dog. Painted in a deliberately awkward hand, his images intentionally evoke the paintings of Victorian watercolourist Edwin Henry Landseer, renowned for depicting comforting scenes of wildlife and portraits of horses, dogs and stags. Coombes' watercolours portray scenes of horror and doom, albeit absurd and comical: a giant golden retriever emerges from the sea rescuing a young boy in its jaw; a tiny woman drowns in a cafetiere while a giant male figure looks on; a sporting gent is trapped in the grasp of bird of prey, his shiny Rolls parked in the background'.4
'Sarah Stone' (2006), a hybrid figure of a tiny bird-woman sporting dangly earrings, perches on the end of a metal armature in a manner reminiscent of how Giacometti positioned his spindly figures within linear structures to demarcate a contained space. 'Inside Kenneth's Mind (A Beautiful Silent Man)', 2007, is a 'small but powerful figurative explosion, forcing its way from the interior, out of the empty orbs and jaw of a skull', set atop a tall plinth.5 It was the first sculpture encountered by the viewer in the exhibition, Black Button. Brownrigg relates this powerful 'staging' to a Giacometti exhibition the artist had read about where one small sculpture was placed alone in a huge gallery, a device which 'frames the consideration that this is intended as an exhibition of singular works, offering the possibility and space for us to look at and consider each contained, framed piece and the luminous world locked within the medium on its own merits, rather than necessitating the desire that it must be part of a whole to unlock any meaning'.6
Coombes' playful yet serious film-sketches, writes critic Alexander Kennedy, recall the early performance and film works of American artist Paul McCarthy, whose grotesque and often violent imagery explored the darker side of American culture. However '[Coombes'] repetitions do not lead to physical but mental and artistic exhaustion. He comes at his task from countless angles until every intonation and knee-jerk is exorcised - he talks to himself, makes his belly button talk in 'Nigel' and shouts at passers-by on the street through soundproof double-glazing in 'Hey Kid!' and 'In Da Club'.7
'Laddy and the Lady' (2006), an 11-minute film, continues Coombes' abiding interest in social ritual and the repression of instinct. Inspired by watching his architect father on shooting trips as a child, it follows an out-of-control golden retriever, owned by a Lady, on a pheasant shoot. Scenes of the shoot are intercut with flashbacks to Laddy's troubled past as a puppy, wrenched from his mother's side. During the shoot, Laddy is subjected to forms of physical and verbal abuse associated with gun dog handling. His inability to behave and retrieve the dead birds results in relentless punishment. Laddy becomes a receiver - a golden receiver of abuse. Filmed in a similar vein to Lars Von Trier's Dogville (2003) in a studio with a minimum of props to signify the location, it features two actors dressed as dogs and a pheasant with a human face. The Laddy character (played by Kevin MacIssac, a six-foot ginger-haired actor) is a vehicle for an individual repressed by the mannerisms and rules around him, who is always fighting his instincts. Ken Neil writes, 'As Lady and one male competitor shoot at the skies with arrogant abandon, the film reaches a powerful audio-visual climax, as poor Laddy suffers a mental collapse. The breakdown transports him and us, by way of a flashback to Laddy's early years as a puppy, and effects a dramatic change of pace: we witness a tranquil fireside scene in which Laddy suckles contentedly at his mother's underbelly. But, just as the viewer assimilates this tragic-comic tenderness as a foil to the heartless clamour of the pheasant slaughter, a truly unforgettable close-up of Laddy at his mother's teat trumps that earlier crescendo. Living for the absolute moment of jouissance, sweet little Laddy-as-puppy uncontrollably and deafeningly guzzles and gorges his bitch's milk, lost in an act of abandoned self-gratification as powerful and as repellent as that enjoyed by the Lady with a gun. This tenderness-cum-terribleness creates a fork in the road on Laddy's (and the viewer's) psychological journey. Snapping back to the reality of the shoot, but with the tenderness of the flashback still in mind, Laddy cannot initially bring himself to retrieve the dead pheasants for a Lady now enraged by his disobedience. Yet, by the same act of recalling cosseted puppyhood, this time with the shame of taking from a mother-as-only-vessel uppermost in mind, Laddy slowly conforms once more to the socialised rituals of the job of retriever, is if to compensate for this earlier existence as selfish receiver.'8
'Laddy and the Lady' was premiered at the Tramway, Glasgow and at The Edinburgh Film Festival in 2006.
References:
1. Jenny Brownrigg, Black Button: Henry Coombes, Cooper Gallery, 2007
2. Ibid.
3. Moira Jeffrey, 'So Calm and Collected', The Herald, June 2002
4. Moira Jeffrey, 'Showing a Vital Spark', The Herald, September 2004
5. Brownrigg, 2007
6. Ibid.
7. Alexander Kennedy, 'Henry Coombes', The List, August 2005
8. Ken Neil, 'Henry Coombes, Laddy and the Lady', The Map, Issue 7, August 2006
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