Graham Gussin Grey Forms

Originally the paintings didn't have titles, they were all going to be called Grey Forms. They have their origin in that, in seeing a painting by Paule Vézelay in her show at the Towner Gallery titled Grey Forms, a strange painting with these dark forms floating against a grey background and I thought maybe that's all you need. I wanted to explore what those forms and that space could be.

I started by making works on paper to see how that felt. Having a brush and paint is not something that I do often, so I had to get used to that feeling again. I did a lot of these, making marks, a dozen at a time, then left them and did another dozen and so on. It's an interesting moment when you've got that question in your head: what’s happening with this? And then you have to try to find out by doing, by carrying it out. That opens into something else. It did seem compelling, in a way, to keep doing this and to try and keep it simple.

There was something unfolding or unravelling in those calligraphic marks. I like the idea that they could be thought of as something taking form in front of you or disappearing into itself, either dissolving or coagulating, ravelling or unravelling. That's what's in common with all of them, forms that are becoming forms, something unrecognisable and perhaps quite alien. These marks might just be turning up on the surface, gathering manifestations, appearing like a mould might appear on the wall. They are fungal or viral in that sense, kind of invasive somehow. There’s probably a connection here with my 16mm film Spill which I made in 1999, a substance moving and unfolding, spilling, into a space, something taking form and then evaporating.The science fiction film Arrival was on my mind, it wasn't initially, but then when I started making them, I thought of that beautiful depiction of language that that film has. Marks that have been made which are multi-dimensional, possibly alive, and change meaning in time... I can never quite remember…

I was excited by this idea of a kind of notation, of a piece of language that was attempting to pronounce its own titles, or maybe name - that sounds quite preposterous! They are trying to make a sound. If there is a calligraphic thing, and I think there is, then they are part of language, but more about how language feels or how language is made. They are quite oral, something that is twisting in the mouth or trying to be articulated. They feel quite physical in that sense.

They are painted on found material from the street. You see these bits of Formica and melamine lying around because people have thrown out their old IKEA wardrobe, and left stuff stacked. It's just chipboard. I liked the idea of making them on these cheap bits of wood panelling or fake wood panelling. I wanted them to not be too much about painting, this was a way of distancing myself from that to some degree. I wanted them to have a greater sense of thing, of the thingness of an object. And they're chipped at the edges. I haven't hidden that. I think that's part of trying to draw attention to the object, to the fact that something's happened to it or that these things are appearing on it, emerging from it.

There are also the really dark ones, these are more like nocturnes. The surface is very dark, with a grain to it, and the forms on those are quite different. They seem to occupy a different space. I wanted that sense of dark and light space and the sense of something floating, a mote in your eye, dust, or a tiny speck of substance.

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