Introducing Hybridity by Donna Marie Howard, Who's Jack
November 2010
wjlondon.com

Mixture. Fusion. Synthesis, even. Call it what you will but ‘hybridity’ - the space between a number of different influences, techniques, and ideas - is both the gift and curse of the contemporary artist. In a Catch-22 state of play that has seen originality become increasingly elusive, artists are having to rely on finding something new to reveal about existing concepts and methods. To employ an obscure analogy, this task has much in common with how an archaeologist digs away at the same patch of earth: they persevere in the hope that they will find something, anything of worth. Often these efforts are unsuccessful. Everybody is left disappointed, exhausted, and dirty. But, every now and then, someone finds a dinosaur.
 
David Wightman is one artist who has made a career out of this very pursuit. Based in London’s Hackney Wick, he occupies the space between abstraction and landscape, high art and low, the home and the gallery - his ‘hybridity’ is not of two elements, but several at once. He builds painted layers of hand-cut wallpaper shapes in an attempt to both reference the loftiness of abstraction (from which the shapes’ place in art originated), and undermine it through references to his personal background. The rich theories that formed the idea of abstraction and which were explored by artists such as Frank Stella have served not as straight inspiration, but as fuel for Wightman’s particular perspective, imbuing abstraction with an intimacy that never would have worked unless its key concepts were manipulated. In this, Wightman’s work does not represent a return to abstraction, but in a sense, brings it kicking and screaming into both contemporary art and contemporary society. By removing the smoke and mirrors that surrounded it until now for those unequipped with an artistic vocabulary, he actively uses the past to engender something entirely different for a modern audience. Progressing in the direction of nostalgia and whimsy rather than academia, Wightman’s drawing upon art history, personal history and everything in between makes art accessible, which is precisely why it works - a pretty considerable feat for an artist who graduated from the RCA less than a decade ago
 
There is no pretence about his work, but because audiences are so used to reading something “deep” in art, it is almost as if they can’t make sense of an art which doesn’t seek to be more than it actually is. It is this sense of failed aspiration (visually appearing as if it is looking to achieve something more but never succeeding) that drives his work, and it is only because of the numerous realms upon which he has drawn that he actually pulls it off. The artist tells me an anecdote in which Lord Snowdon came to his studio and became enraptured: “he loved the wallpaper and said that he had this one in one particular residence, and this one in another...I told him that he couldn’t have done; this was just cheap wallpaper from B&Q”. Snowdon’s subsequent cooling toward the work is suggestive of his disappointment that something he invests with connotations of wealth and grandeur is actually more evocative of your dad bumbling around the house on a Sunday, looking for wonky cupboard doors to repair.
 
Audiences are au fait with the idea of high art, and they expect you to fulfil it: they don’t necessarily expect to understand it, and approach it prepared to be overwhelmed by the theoretical concerns inevitably hidden within. When it is revealed that they are already in the know, that their first impression was absolutely right - the work is about them: it’s about their childhood, their family home - they are utterly disarmed. They are almost disappointed they can understand it because it interrupts their perception of what art should be. Sceptics might consider Wightman’s particular hybrid angle to be a touch too simple - it’s not world-changing, but that’s the point. It is honest and humble about its origins and its future - it’s not the Lady Gaga of the art world and it won’t ever win an Oscar, but it will certainly make sure that audiences respond to art in a way entirely unfamiliar to them.
 
By making art personal, and inclusive to all rather than exclusive to many, Wightman’s work reveals that hybridity does not necessarily exist as an approach with one eye on the clock and an awareness of the finite amount of past subject matter which may inform it. In one sense, it has become the ultimate pursuit; there may not be an endless supply of referents upon which we can draw, but there will continue to be new and increasingly subtle ways in which the same stories can be retold, updated and reinvigorated for new audiences.
 
After all, isn’t this what artists have always done? Haven’t they always drawn upon the familiar, the foreign, fusing inspiration with imagination and a little artistic flourish? In this respect, hybridity seems not only natural, but necessary. In the seventeenth century, Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer was a pioneer of the renowned genre portrait (which offered modest and humble insights into private interiors that often narrated a woman’s engagement in a leisurely pursuit), and is considered to have combined it with the technology of the camera obscura. His subsequent reputation as “painter of light” owes a lot to the hybridity of his approach: his subject introduced the lighting patterns - situating his figures to the right of leaden windows is a particular idiosyncrasy - but his scientific technique facilitated their ethereal appearance. Were it not for a combination of ideas and methods, Vermeer may well have remained an unknown artist well past the eighteenth century when he was discovered. And as for Andy Warhol, had he not pursued a synthesis of art, advertising, and a shockingly successful self-promotion strategy, nobody would be anywhere near as preoccupied at the sight of a tin of Campbell’s soup, or a box of Brillo Pads, for that matter.
 
Of course, this idea of hybridity cannot be limited to art alone: it plays a role in every creative, academic and cultural pursuit. Developments in Ph.D. theses come about through thorough research into what has gone before, changes to the law are the result of careful and considered reflection upon the past. Culinary progress materialises as the result of thorough research into established traditions and ingredients usually pigeon-holed for other purposes - here I refer you to the deep-fried Mars bar. And let us not forget that American band The Flaming Lips were actually taken to court after it was revealed to them that both lyrically and musically their song ‘Fight Test’ (from the 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots), was near-identical to Cat Stevens’ ‘Father and Son’ of 32 years previous. Originality is becoming an increasingly difficult status to achieve and - as David Wightman’s works admit in their sense of failed aspiration - there is no shame in that. It simply ups the ante: we should feel encouraged to pursue the ideas we consider as worthy, in whatever guise they may come and from whichever unexpected corner; it just means that when we can call ourselves truly original, it becomes all the more impressive.
 
Whilst art informed by hybridity may not at first have appeared to be of particular cultural value, if we consider why it is that the artist has returned to a previously excavated subject matter, or an abandoned technique, it is because something of value can yet be drawn from it. If Science were a person, it wouldn’t think ‘Oh, but we’ve seen something like it before, how dull’. Science would eagerly lap it up, thankful for the exposure of something previously bypassed, and become excited at the prospect of the future developments to which it could lead. As such, hybridity is not merely a return to the past, but a manner of laying the foundations for the future. And so, to return to the pre-historic analogy - it may have fewer feathers than before, a few more scales and perhaps an extra set of teeth, but if a newly discovered dinosaur means anything - it means progress.

Donna Marie Howard