Apollo come dance with me. Chaos and order; the paradigm of creation

'Apollo come dance with me’ examines through my exegesis and three suites of paintings a discourse regarding chaos-and-order as a creative paradigm. To understand this discourse I have turned to Attic tragic theatre and Attic black-figure vase painting in order to see the forces of chaos-and-order reverberating as a creative paradigm. The art practice engages with and explores mimesis, metaphor and metamorphosis as methods and methodology resonating with Ancient Greek Attic (tragic) theatre and Ancient Greek Attic (black-figure) vase painting. It draws from these classical art forms as a way of informing the expression of a chaos-and-order creative paradigm in my arts-led project.

My practice based research comprising three suites of paintings and an exegesis examines the relevant aspects of form, content and style that demonstrate methods and methodology used to activate a chaos-and-order creative paradigm. Such a paradigm is locatable specifically in my art practices, which is informed by chaos-and-order references from: Attic tragic theatre trilogy: the Theban plays by Sophocles; and the seventh century B.C. black-figure vase painting of Ancient Greece. The narrative engaged by referencing of the Theban plays is through figurative content, and it details a discourse regarding the psychology and philosophy of human interaction with the social and natural worlds. A second narrative regarding chaos-and-order as a creative paradigm is engaged through form by my combination of superimposition and figuration. The research draws together the links between these two narratives or fields as a way of furthering this knowledge through art practice. In this process, the research seeks to reveal philosophical, psychological and formal aspects of these practices.

The point of engagement with Attic vase paintings and tragic theatre’s chaos-and-order duality in my art practice is through my utilisation of figuration in the form of portraits of myself and my family members to represent characters from the Attic theatre trilogy, the Theban plays by Sophocles. The artwork investigates the depiction of the individual and society in terms of tragic theatre’s exploration of human experience. As Greek tragic theatre depicts the social, psychological and cognitive relationships of the characters with each other and the external world so my art practice examines figuration’s ability to convey aspects of that drama.

Through a practice-led methodology the artwork investigates the conditions of chaos-and-order via mimetic, metaphoric and metamorphic expressions of figurative superimposition. Superimposition as a formal element enacts the participation of multiplicity, difference and chance and enables an investigation of assemblage, layering, multiplicity, duality and oppositional dichotomies as philosophical systems of artistic enquiry. My employment of the rhizomatic method of consideration and construction, as described by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psycho-analyst Félix Guattari enables a visual engagement with, and deconstruction of, G.F.W. Hegel’s negating dialectic as a philosophical system of enquiry. This project aims to achieve a shift through practice-led research into Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical expression of affirmation through multiplicity and chance. The project researches through art practices my understanding of the physics and psychology of change, chance and metamorphoses as forces of creation.