HEATH NOCK
belongings
31.03.2023 ~ 16.04.2023
“…Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.”
- Walter Benjamin - Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (1969)
‘Belongings’ reflects upon our deep personal relationships with the objects we choose to keep around us. These objects often act as reminders to memories of places, people and emotions. Their presence can be the foundation for a sense of identity, comfort and belonging.
The works in this exhibition are all still-life paintings of objects from the artist’s home, each with a deep connection to his story. It was the hit of an expected wave of Nostalgia whilst painting ’90’s Night Light’, a composition of a lonely Donald Duck nightlight posed off-centre in a shadowy blue void, that this connection became apparent and revealed its presence in the works.
“I was painting Donald Duck when a deep sense nostalgia hit me out of nowhere… after I thought about it for a while… the realization occurred that all these objects I have chosen to paint are ones that my partner and I keep in our house to remind us of someplace we had been or a time we lived. They are all our belongings… and it was this double entendre in the word belonging, that it can mean personal possessions and a sense of being a part of something, that made me settle on it as the title of the show…”
