Written for the exhibition, "Transition and Resonance", Llantarnam Art Centre, 2014.
Michael Flynn is a chameleon character – or is he perhaps a leprechaun? He has many identities and manifestations. He might even be said to be ‘of no fixed abode’. Nevertheless, I visited him at his studio in Cardiff which he considers is his primary base. As I climb the open wooden stairs in the warehouse/studio I glimpse into rooms crammed with sculptures, paintings, tables and kilns until, up on the top floor, we reach an inner sanctum of the living space. Cool jazz music plays on the sound system as I sink into the settee in a book-lined room. A painting is underway at the back. Although Michael is dealing with a domestic crisis of a broken-down boiler, we settle down to talk by a welcoming gas fire.
We start with identity as it seems so central in Flynn’s work. He and his twin brother were born in Germany at the end of the war to Irish parents, but not long afterwards they moved back and settled in England. Memorable holidays, however, were spent back on the farm in rural Ireland. When he left school, earlier than might have been expected of a boy of his class and background, he attended art college but later left that to be a zoo keeper for a year. The close inter-relationship of animals and humans seem to be deeply imprinted on his psyche. Michael Flynn may be a very urban person but in his leaping goats, leering pigs or the looming mass of a bull he captures a spirited wildness, an animal essence which extends through into his human figures.
Early on he felt the need to re-capture his German birthright and, as a teenager, he hitch-hiked to Germany. He had no word of the language but with his Irish ‘gift of the gab’ language has never been a problem and he soon began to pick it up and communicate. Central Europe is his second home – currently that is Poland but in other periods it has been Germany and he has taught and exhibited widely in that part of the world. The audience there can readily respond to his artistic borrowings that have such strong central European connotations from the baroque illusionism and diagonals, to the angst-ridden expressionist sexuality or the Dresden figurine. All are mixed into the rich sauce of Flynn’s art. Story telling traditions (he is Irish after all), literature and mythology feed his imagination. Behind it is his European cultural heritage – the misbehavings of gods and satyrs filtered through the screen of later interpretations and stories such as those by Robert Graves or Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. The Brothers Grimm may also have contributed with their creepy tales of cottages, castles and gloomy forests.
Cardiff, and in particular Cardiff College of Art (currently Cardiff Metropolitan University) has been important to Flynn. Originally he had studied fine art in Birmingham in the 1960s but, after a long gap, he returned to study as a mature student choosing ceramics with the idea that he needed a more structured discipline. He completed a BA followed by an MA on a course which, for the period, was remarkably liberal and open. It never tied students down to the then dominant tendency for vessel making as the ultimate statement in ceramics. Flynn always maintained a commitment to a fine art approach and figurative work which had long been side-lined by ceramicists worried about its lack of integrity and associations with dainty figurines. In his final show he filled his space and more with figurative sculptures and drawings. It was an immediate success. Opportunities quickly opened up and he found he had offers of shows. In turn he became an influential figure in the nineties in Cardiff, an institution that has produced a number of notable figurative ceramicists. Flynn looks back on the period with some nostalgia – or ‘Is it just because I am getting older?’ he muses. Cardiff just buzzed with energy and excitement in that decade and the years following Devolution. He recognises that the Arts Council of Wales has always been very supportive over the years and feels that he has often produced his best work in Wales.
Meanwhile in Central and Eastern Europe they too were experiencing a period of radical change and renewed optimism and they had a ready-eye for Expressionism, perhaps the most influential modern movement associated with the German-speaking world. Michael Flynn found a receptive audience.
In recent years forest has been one of the central themes in his work. Flynn specifically recalls one of his earliest memories was being in the forest with his father and brother. The theme can be seen in this exhibition in the porcelain plaques assembled from pre-fired pieces fitted together to create a dense backdrop of tree trunks. Figures and animals dodge out of the undergrowth or peer from behind a trunk. There is little colouring but a contrast is made between the matte and glazed surfaces. The incorporation of a bush or tree stump is a common device in the history of ceramic figurines but these groups are more complex. To achieve the contrast of figure and trunk in this high relief format is challenging. The parts are glued together, anathema to most ceramicists. Ever anarchic, it is another of the ceramic rules that Flynn happily flaunts.
It is not surprising, then, that Flynn has never been tied down to specific techniques although his attachment to porcelain has been long standing. His early figurative ceramics were raku-fired, a technique that came into vogue in the last two decades of the twentieth century for its immediate and experimental results and interesting glaze effects. Its limitations are that the low firing temperature makes works very vulnerable especially with pieces with such irregular profiles. Although most work is fired in conventional kilns he likes to experiment with firing when the opportunity arises including saltgalze and, most recently, woodfiring with Marmic de Lange in Belgium.
One of the predominant themes running through the imagery in this exhibition is that of a powerful female goddess, an ancient prototype predating patriarchal Christianity - the imprint of a Catholic upbringing lurks in the air mainly by its rejection. The goddess is celebratory, dionysiac and dangerous taking the form of snake woman, horse woman, queen or domineering matriarch. Figures morph from human to animal or are sometimes masked to lend a double identity. The visual power is created by the spontaneity in the free-hand modelling, provocative poses and dynamic balancing of the figures.
Figures are naked but given significant props – a crown or high heels or a horned mask and the sexuality heightened by gesture and detail. The overall colour is white with sometimes a breakthrough of ochre but it is his touches of red that ignite the unease - the nipples, the toes, the vulva. They almost seem accidental but they are not and they add a frisson of devilment and danger. For some they may even go too far, but his figures insist on a visceral bodily response – emerging from the deep veins of stories and images that drill back through European culture from Gothic tales to Renaissance orgies and classical myths of men turned beast. His most ambitious piece is the larger figure of a feminized potato boy (Solanum Tuberosum Adoremus Te). Draped with mantilla and beads it teasingly plays on religious and sexual imagery.
He has always used life-drawing to inform and inspire his sculpture and paintings although he never creates a narrow form of naturalism. The different media complement each other and he likes to show them together. In his paintings the figure groups rely on expressive distortions and personal and carnivalesque themes which take up similar subjects of potato boy, monkey masks, dangerous or wild women and often a boyish figure spectator. ‘The Son and his mother’ uses a double mother image the confident glamorous female towering over a cowering naked son. It is not surprising then when Flynn admits he had a dominant mother.
For this show Flynn has also prepared a number of bronze castings, a medium that lends itself very well to the figure in movement. Nor is it new to his oeuvre but in comparison with earlier examples the five sculptures in the Dance series explore altogether new territory. They eschew the beautiful patina and subtle gleam of bronze in favour of a rough surface that seems to have emerged raw from the ground. It is a rawness that enhances the primitive expressive effect. These new bronzes are surely among the most powerful pieces in the show.
Moira Vincentelli
May 2013. For the exhibition, "Michael Flynn, Transition and Resonance, a Modern Masque", at Llantarnam Grange Art Centre, Cwmbran, Wales.
We start with identity as it seems so central in Flynn’s work. He and his twin brother were born in Germany at the end of the war to Irish parents, but not long afterwards they moved back and settled in England. Memorable holidays, however, were spent back on the farm in rural Ireland. When he left school, earlier than might have been expected of a boy of his class and background, he attended art college but later left that to be a zoo keeper for a year. The close inter-relationship of animals and humans seem to be deeply imprinted on his psyche. Michael Flynn may be a very urban person but in his leaping goats, leering pigs or the looming mass of a bull he captures a spirited wildness, an animal essence which extends through into his human figures.
Early on he felt the need to re-capture his German birthright and, as a teenager, he hitch-hiked to Germany. He had no word of the language but with his Irish ‘gift of the gab’ language has never been a problem and he soon began to pick it up and communicate. Central Europe is his second home – currently that is Poland but in other periods it has been Germany and he has taught and exhibited widely in that part of the world. The audience there can readily respond to his artistic borrowings that have such strong central European connotations from the baroque illusionism and diagonals, to the angst-ridden expressionist sexuality or the Dresden figurine. All are mixed into the rich sauce of Flynn’s art. Story telling traditions (he is Irish after all), literature and mythology feed his imagination. Behind it is his European cultural heritage – the misbehavings of gods and satyrs filtered through the screen of later interpretations and stories such as those by Robert Graves or Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. The Brothers Grimm may also have contributed with their creepy tales of cottages, castles and gloomy forests.
Cardiff, and in particular Cardiff College of Art (currently Cardiff Metropolitan University) has been important to Flynn. Originally he had studied fine art in Birmingham in the 1960s but, after a long gap, he returned to study as a mature student choosing ceramics with the idea that he needed a more structured discipline. He completed a BA followed by an MA on a course which, for the period, was remarkably liberal and open. It never tied students down to the then dominant tendency for vessel making as the ultimate statement in ceramics. Flynn always maintained a commitment to a fine art approach and figurative work which had long been side-lined by ceramicists worried about its lack of integrity and associations with dainty figurines. In his final show he filled his space and more with figurative sculptures and drawings. It was an immediate success. Opportunities quickly opened up and he found he had offers of shows. In turn he became an influential figure in the nineties in Cardiff, an institution that has produced a number of notable figurative ceramicists. Flynn looks back on the period with some nostalgia – or ‘Is it just because I am getting older?’ he muses. Cardiff just buzzed with energy and excitement in that decade and the years following Devolution. He recognises that the Arts Council of Wales has always been very supportive over the years and feels that he has often produced his best work in Wales.
Meanwhile in Central and Eastern Europe they too were experiencing a period of radical change and renewed optimism and they had a ready-eye for Expressionism, perhaps the most influential modern movement associated with the German-speaking world. Michael Flynn found a receptive audience.
In recent years forest has been one of the central themes in his work. Flynn specifically recalls one of his earliest memories was being in the forest with his father and brother. The theme can be seen in this exhibition in the porcelain plaques assembled from pre-fired pieces fitted together to create a dense backdrop of tree trunks. Figures and animals dodge out of the undergrowth or peer from behind a trunk. There is little colouring but a contrast is made between the matte and glazed surfaces. The incorporation of a bush or tree stump is a common device in the history of ceramic figurines but these groups are more complex. To achieve the contrast of figure and trunk in this high relief format is challenging. The parts are glued together, anathema to most ceramicists. Ever anarchic, it is another of the ceramic rules that Flynn happily flaunts.
It is not surprising, then, that Flynn has never been tied down to specific techniques although his attachment to porcelain has been long standing. His early figurative ceramics were raku-fired, a technique that came into vogue in the last two decades of the twentieth century for its immediate and experimental results and interesting glaze effects. Its limitations are that the low firing temperature makes works very vulnerable especially with pieces with such irregular profiles. Although most work is fired in conventional kilns he likes to experiment with firing when the opportunity arises including saltgalze and, most recently, woodfiring with Marmic de Lange in Belgium.
One of the predominant themes running through the imagery in this exhibition is that of a powerful female goddess, an ancient prototype predating patriarchal Christianity - the imprint of a Catholic upbringing lurks in the air mainly by its rejection. The goddess is celebratory, dionysiac and dangerous taking the form of snake woman, horse woman, queen or domineering matriarch. Figures morph from human to animal or are sometimes masked to lend a double identity. The visual power is created by the spontaneity in the free-hand modelling, provocative poses and dynamic balancing of the figures.
Figures are naked but given significant props – a crown or high heels or a horned mask and the sexuality heightened by gesture and detail. The overall colour is white with sometimes a breakthrough of ochre but it is his touches of red that ignite the unease - the nipples, the toes, the vulva. They almost seem accidental but they are not and they add a frisson of devilment and danger. For some they may even go too far, but his figures insist on a visceral bodily response – emerging from the deep veins of stories and images that drill back through European culture from Gothic tales to Renaissance orgies and classical myths of men turned beast. His most ambitious piece is the larger figure of a feminized potato boy (Solanum Tuberosum Adoremus Te). Draped with mantilla and beads it teasingly plays on religious and sexual imagery.
He has always used life-drawing to inform and inspire his sculpture and paintings although he never creates a narrow form of naturalism. The different media complement each other and he likes to show them together. In his paintings the figure groups rely on expressive distortions and personal and carnivalesque themes which take up similar subjects of potato boy, monkey masks, dangerous or wild women and often a boyish figure spectator. ‘The Son and his mother’ uses a double mother image the confident glamorous female towering over a cowering naked son. It is not surprising then when Flynn admits he had a dominant mother.
For this show Flynn has also prepared a number of bronze castings, a medium that lends itself very well to the figure in movement. Nor is it new to his oeuvre but in comparison with earlier examples the five sculptures in the Dance series explore altogether new territory. They eschew the beautiful patina and subtle gleam of bronze in favour of a rough surface that seems to have emerged raw from the ground. It is a rawness that enhances the primitive expressive effect. These new bronzes are surely among the most powerful pieces in the show.
Moira Vincentelli
May 2013. For the exhibition, "Michael Flynn, Transition and Resonance, a Modern Masque", at Llantarnam Grange Art Centre, Cwmbran, Wales.
