2009; acrylic ink on paper
27 January – 24 February 2010
iArt Gallery Wembley: A Project Room for Contemporary Art
This exhibition consists of a collection of drawings by Colijn Strydom, inspired by the artist’s obsessive response to Sylvia Plath’s 1962 poem, “Poppies in October”, from the last collection Plath produced before her death in 1963.
In this body of work, rendered in architect’s pen on paper, Strydom has taken flowers as a primary motif. Through his painstakingly intricate and neurotically delicate imaginative expansions of the poem, Strydom explores his own psychological response to matters of the personal, the political, the decorative, the corporeal and the ultimately beautiful.
“Poppies in October” (Sylvia Plath, 1962)
Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly –
A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky
Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.
O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.