ALBERT CAMUS : OEUVRES
Galerie
Scrawitch, Paris
4 - 27 September, 2014
‘Je m’ouvrais pour la première fois à la tendre indifférence
du monde.’
L’Etranger
As is usual with my exhibitions I tried to find a connection
between me and the place. In this instance, as it was Paris it wasn’t
so difficult. The starting-point for the project was the prospect of my
first solo exhibition in the city where I lived for two years just
after finishing university, when I was setting out to turn myself into
an artist, having recently finished studying Modern History. It
immediately struck me that Camus should be my subject. He’d made a
great impression on me at an impressionable age, when I read everything
I could get my hands on in translation. I was a very belated
‘existentialist’. I remember joining the Existentialist Discussion
Group in my first year at Oxford and feeling rather intimidated, until
I made a good impression on my fellow ‘existentialists’ by saying that
contrary to their opinion I thought Camus was in the end an optimist,
in that he so lyrically celebrates the experience of the climate and
nature of his native Algeria. I also performed in a
dramatized version of ‘L’Etranger’, or ‘The Outsider’ as its called in
the UK world (it’s ‘The Stranger” in the USA). No, I wasn’t Meursault.
I was his lawyer. The guy who played Meursault was pretty good, I
thought. I have no idea what became of him.
And now, after a very long time, I revisited Camus, and have
been reading him in French. My works pay homage not only to the author
but also to the publisher, Gallimard, for whom Camus worked as an
editor. The beautiful typography of the NRF series made painting my
Book-Paintings a real pleasure. I’ve also made a series of rubbings of
places where Camus lived and worked in Paris, including the door-plaque
chez Gallimard in the Quartier Latin. It’s a kind of ‘in the
footsteps…’ work. Between these two series were other
attempts to catch something of what Camus means to me, and what I think
painting can do now.
You can view the video ‘Nous tous, parmi les ruines’ by
searching for ‘Simon Morley on Vimeo.
