The Time of Our Lives | Oliver Sears Gallery | Online
The Time of Our Lives
Oliver Sears Gallery
Online exhibition 14 April - 29 May 2020
View on: oliversearsgallery.com
The Sea 7-1-20 | Nick Miller | Watercolour on paper| 30 x 40 cm
The Time of Our Lives
The future can go and be
bloody terrifying on its own
for all I care. Me and my girl
are stepping out for the past.
We’re putting our best foot
backwards, heading for home.
What we'll do when we get there
we haven’t decided yet.
For the time being at least
we’re having the time of our lives
all over again.
Hugo Williams
All Over again
Most mornings for the last few years, the nearby sea calls me from the comfort of my bed to swim alone. In the water I am free of the “bloody terrifying” future and the persistent past. The sea’s indifference to my fate offers a strange freedom, a universal encounter and a salve to the self, particularly in this time of extreme existential anxiety. Putting “my best foot backwards”, I attempt paintings to extend and hold this brief daily meeting with nature in my life. And then, like waves, “all over again’’.
Nick Miller
2/4/20
The Time of Our Lives
The future can go and be
bloody terrifying on its own
for all I care. Me and my girl
are stepping out for the past.
We’re putting our best foot
backwards, heading for home.
What we'll do when we get there
we haven’t decided yet.
For the time being at least
we’re having the time of our lives
all over again.
Hugo Williams
“The future can go and be bloody terrifying on its own for all I care”
The last few weeks have brought us, humankind, to a rare inflection point in our collective history. Rather like our ancestors, who tried to measure the future of their lives at the outbreak of World War, we too find ourselves speculating about a future that seems unknowable. So it is to the past that we turn, either in nostalgic recollection or for a familiarity that is simple in its certainty, to cast the anchor and keep our wits. It’s unsurprising that more of us than ever now turn to art, music and literature to interpret our new, strange daily lives.
Hugo Williams, whose poem The Time of Our Lives, has given us the title of our new exhibition says that poets are different because they are inconsolable. They understand that suffering is at the core of the human condition and are compelled to find meaning in the face of this truth. Williams seemingly pithy poem is powered by alternating future and present tenses which is an intriguing device to talk about the past; a place where we are having the time of our lives. We have asked our artists to provide a work of art and if they so choose, to include a few lines of commentary on the poem.
The exhibition is online on our website, Artsy, Twitter & Instagram. We hope you remain safe and healthy during this current crisis and have an opportunity to view the exhibition.
Artists: Katherine Boucher Beug, Sophia Campbell, Michael Canning, Barrie Cooke, Claire Curneen, Jason Ellis, Paul Gaffney, Liam Flynn, Sarah Iremonger, Stephen Lawlor, David Eager Maher, Ed Miliano, Nick Miller, Hughie O'Donoghue, Laurence Riddell, Sasha Sykes, Jeff Schneider, Amelia Stein, Donald Teskey, Corban Walker, Sarah Walker, Samuel Walsh, Keith Wilson.