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Micky and the Whale 2000-2013
works on paper
collaboration with Steenus von Steensen - new media work
I remember my own experience of seeing whales. I can still feel their 'whaleness' rise and fall within me. The slowness of the motion, the hugeness of the form: this is what moves me. A whale is both primeval and alive now. It is a presence way larger than myself but strangely akin. What sort of consciousness does it have? Can it link to mine? What would it be like to be within the whale? What would I learn? Given that everything changes, everything is always shifting, what would transform into what?
Micky Allan 2011
| click on thumbnails to view detailed image |
Nada and the Whale, Micky and the Whale, plunge, chase, vortex, sunset, fear, albatross, dark and strange, infinity, finding balance, spiral, the unknown, becoming, prayer, expansion, plunge with fish, spinning, down, down, whale spout, lost, death, whale, horizon, sun over sea, release, swimming with the white whale, two whales, triumph, whale and spiral, pink and gold, white whale
Micky and the Whale is a contemporary re-examination of the story of Jonah, which exists in Christian, Islamic and Judaic tradition. It isolates out the episode in the big fish or whale and emphasises the theme of symbolic death and renewal. Micky and the Whale consists of a flexible grouping of of 75 watercolours by Micky Allan, each 20 x 20 cm and as a video with narrative text and some animation (see Vimeo link below).
Bringing new perspectives to the old transformation story, Micky and the Whale uses the Jonah story as a metaphor for the natural cycles of life, both large and small, as well as for the rhythms of the process of creativity itself. Cycles of transformation and change are seen as continually repeating themselves. The myth is used to link personal emotional cycles with vaster cycles of nature ranging from the mundane shifts of daily experience to suggestions of the endless birth and death of universes. Transformation is seen as an ordinary and continual process, part of the natural evolution of consciousness and as well as the continual flux of life. The whale and the collaged figure of Micky finally synthesise and merge as a new cycle begins. At the end we are left with a sense of expansion and endless cycles of becoming rather than stasis or a fixed new state.
Micky Allan, 2013
Micky and the Whale (collaboration with Steenus von Steensen) 2013, video with animations and text, 10 minutes.
Exhibited in Sea 2013 and the Blake Prize 2013.
Click on the title page to the left to watch it at the Vimeo website.