Still Life

'Still Life'is a six page feature in Frieze Magazine on Sarah Jones's practice which took the form of a conversation between the New York based fiction writer A.M.Homes and Jones. This was a conversation that had begun when A.M. Homes invited Jones to spend some time at Yaddo Artist's Colony in upstate New York firstly in 2006 and secondly as The Meredith Moody Fellow in 2008. Homes also wrote a short story in response to Jones' photographs for The National Media Museum's Archive publication (2007/8). This text was commissioned by the museum as part of Jones' solo exhibition at the conclusion of her tenure as the museum's Photography Felllow. Jones and Homes were invited by Frieze to formalise their correspondence for publication. The interview in Frieze magazine was edited by Jennifer Higgie from a taped conversation between Jones and Homes, made during a visit by Jones to New York to meet Homes in early 2008. The feature includes several full colour reproductions of Jones' work alongside the conversation.

Cross-artform creative practice as still-life recovery: Chinese-Western materialisms of time, writing and death

As argued by Norman Bryson, the still-life genre is sorely neglected by theorists and critics, largely because its concern with ‘low-plane reality’ (everyday items and acts) has obscured its genuine relevance to material thinking. By reappraising rather than abandoning the genre’s traditional themes of death and time—using a cross-cultural, Chinese-Western approach—it is possible to re-energise materialisms of time, writing and death within still life. Such a move depends above all on a re-evaluation of still life as ‘Vanitas’—the term which to date has unified, and more to the point limited, traditional still-life understandings of death and time. This article tracks a more explosive and creative materialism of still life simultaneously through the specifically Chinese approach to death (which includes the ‘Yin Yang’ 阴阳 as a sort of author of time) and via Gilles Deleuze’s cinematic philosophy of the time-image; what connects these is the very Deleuzean notion of time that subtends Chinese engagements with death. In this way, the still-life genre may be recovered from its current critical and theoretical malaise. Reconnecting with practice is a crucial aspect of this recovery, and so in its early stages this article analyses an example of still-life, creative non-fiction (authored by Cher Coad), and it concludes by establishing the value of this potentially ‘new chapter of the “still life” genre’ (in Matilde Marcolli’s terms) for the cross-artform analysis of the short story ‘Nhill’ (authored by Patrick West). Analysis, though, is only half the picture: a fully recovered still-life genre would see theory and practice endlessly circulating through each other, spurring on practice and impelling theory. Coad’s and West’s literary examples are introduced in the hope that they might trigger fresh theoretical and practice-based, still-life discoveries in prose and also in poetry.

Writing “nhill” : the short story as still life

This chapter explores the philosophical, literary and practice-based elements that contributed to the writing by the author of a short story ('Nhill') and reflects upon how, as an example of creative-writing practice, the story contributes to Humanities-based research into issues of time, settlement, Aboriginality and post-coloniality. It works with theorists such as Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva and Norman Bryson, as well as engaging with various painterly examples of Still Life. The possibility of a productive syncretism between Literature and Painting is proposed and extended.

Still Life with Flowers

Balthasar van der Ast; 1 ft. 11 15/64 in.x 1 ft. 4 59/64 in.; oil on panel

Still Life with a Salt

Pieter Claesz; 1 ft. 8 25/32 in.x 1 ft. 5 21/64 in.; oil on panel

Still Life with Cheese

Floris Claesz. van Dyck; 2 ft. 8 23/64 in.x 3 ft. 7 25/32 in.; oil on panel

Still Life with a Gilt Goblet

Willem Claesz Heda; 2 ft. 10 41/64 in.x 3 ft. 8 31/64 in.; oil on panel

Still Life with Fruit and Oysters

Abraham Mignon; 2 ft. 5 17/32 in. x 1 ft. 11 5/8 in.; oil on canvas

Still Life: Game, Vegetables, Fruit, Cockatoo

Adriaen van Utrecht; 3 ft. 11 1/4 in. x 8 ft. 2 5/8 in.; oil on canvas

Still Life with a Gilded Beer Tankard

Willem Claesz Heda; 1 ft. 5 33/64 in.x 2 ft. 13/32 in.; oil on panel