The Abandoned Boat

The Abandoned Boat
File:The Abandoned boat by Aqeel Solangi.jpgThe Abandoned boat by Aqeel Solangi.jpg The Abandoned boat by Aqeel Solangi.jpg
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The Abandoned Boat is a painting by Pakistani artist Aqeel Solangi. It's an Oil painting measuring 153 x 184cm (60 x 72 in). Work was created at the Bath School of Art and Design Bath Spa University Bath, Somerset UK in 2016 while Aqeel Solangi was doing his Master of Fine Arts degree, and 'The Abandoned Boat' was part of the display in the degree show. Later, this work was also exhibited in the The Sites of Myth at the KOEL Art Gallery, Karachi in 2017 where it became part of a private collection.

Subject

The Abandoned Boat is a painting that was set in the background of Oxo Tower in London, during the artist's frequent visits to London in 2015-16. The subject and main theme revolve around the boat that was placed as abandoned object within the building compound, where people sometimes connect themselves with the boat and sometimes feel alienated to it even the placement of umbrella is detached from the human figures. If closely observed within the painting, the bulb which is a source of light is off and getting light from somewhere else, it could be a ray of sunlight appeared and made the situation dramatic/enigmatic and captivating. The white patch at the top right corner of the painting seems like a translucent window.

Literature review

Dr Michele Whiting writes about The Abandoned Boat (2016) :‘Emotion in painting inhabits a different space from everyday emotion, maybe gesturing towards it through layers, saturation and echoes of colours that help to create a sort of frame of human consciousness, this is not political in a sense of any overt politic but rather points towards the frailty of mankind and his/her position within a shifting and difficult world, raising questions of existential validity within these reduced, painted spaces. Take for instance The Abandoned Boat (2016). In this painting three figures narrate their relationship - at a moment in time - to a singular boat. Through a rigorous process of photography, the construction and composition of the painting tells of a pedestrian day in the making. Boredom, as an emotion, hangs heavy through the lack of engagement with the boat in the two seemingly disconnected figures, and the almost banal situation or site. An umbrella lies discarded to the forefront of the work. This object seems dislocated from the subjects, it is heavy like a fallen bird, one has the immediate view that it probably doesn’t function well any longer, but what is it’s purpose? Positioning the umbrella at the forefront of the picture plane, means that the artist has so positioned it for the viewer to be aware of looking into the reality presented, making us, the viewer cognisant of this action, and this is in opposition to Formalist theories that assert flatness and non-illusionistic tendencies. The umbrella here serves another purpose, in that it reminds us of certain Western art histories, such as Hans Holbein the Younger, whose work The Ambassadors (Holbein), housed at the National Gallery, London and painted in 1533 shows an anamorphic skull hovering in the near picture plane as a symbol of mortality. Correlations can be drawn with the broken umbrella (although not anamorphic) unable to function and discarded into viewer ‘space’, expanding the flatness of the painting, with the nature of being discarded (‘discardedness’) accentuated through the situation of the boat.’

Jovita Alvares writes in ArtNow Pakistan as: ‘The Abandoned Boat’ is a unique piece among the rest. The work narrates three people interacting around a discarded boat kept inside a building. What is interesting about this painting besides the size and composition is the collage that went in to making the work. Unlike the other pieces that merge two different places together, this work resulted from an amalgamation of multiple images of the same exact place. Therefore, apart from the broken umbrella in the foreground, all the elements of the paintings come from one exact place and it is the different time periods that are montaged. Solangi noted that he captured three-hundred and thirty-three photographs of interactions surrounding the boat. Eventually, it was narrowed down to five photographs from which the movement of the people and objects were chosen to paint. The whole image seems as a paradox within itself. A boat meant to move across the water and allow travel, sits useless within a four-wall building now a spectacle, an illusion of its former self. The light above creates a shadow that the rest of the objects don’t seem to have. Of the three people surrounding the boat, two are unconcerned about where there are, engaging in solitary activities and on the left side of the surface hang s a CCTV camera, something meant for surveillance, looking away from the place of activity. Finally, the umbrella lies abandoned like the boat, inverted and destroyed, no longer serving the purpose it was manufactured for. The painting is uneasy in its illustration, questioning the functions of spaces and their relations with those around them.'

Peerzada Salman writes in the DAWN (Metropolitan-Karachi): ‘But Solangi’s real achievement is the use of space. The stories that he’s telling cannot be read, understood and felt without taking space into consideration. The distance from where ‘The Abandoned Boat’ can be viewed, the tightness of frame in ‘The Reader’ and the standpoint which ‘It Was a Dream and You’re Part of That’ propagates can be enjoyed more in a spatial frame of reference’.

External links

• http://www.aqeelsolangi.com.pk/
• http://www.aqeelsolangi.blogspot.com/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTBKlcje0qg
• http://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/the-sites-of-myth/

References

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