Page 28 - Studio International - September 1967

Michael Sandie drives, sado-masochism, Paranoia, Melancholia are
taken into account and subsumed into the inquiry.
The work comes about, takes on the form and appear- If it is possible to say this, the direction is towards
ance that it has because of an inquiring attitude, bringing together seemingly discrete entities I find
which, although it certainly constitutes an inquiry, is in within myself and making some kind of sense, making
no way scientific or formalistic. a synthesis of the range of emotional states, thoughts
Although radically subjective, the inquiry is not and bodily sensation that I experience.
based purely on solipsism. The nearest equivalent (or There is no absolute, 'outside of me', formal proble-
so I intuit) to the process in another discipline is the matic as far as I am concerned. The approach is
'phenomenological method' of Existentialism. 'casuistical' and pragmatic.
What I am concerned with through my work is not in It is a question of discovering/finding/making analo-
isolating separate meanings as they occur, although gues for consciousness of myself, of deploying
this certainly comes into it, but in operating within a tautologies which represent the complex of 'body
'complex' or 'concrete' of whatever phenomenum of images', intuitions and 'concepts' that is my aware-
meaning is made available to me through conscious- ness of myself and others.
ness. It is a question of using rhetorical devices, e.g. a
Obsessional states concerning entoptic lights and synecdoche to refer to that which is not there, that
hypnagogic imagery, Memory and Paramnesia, in- which is hidden or occluded by consciousness situated
fantile regression, the connexion between anal-oral in contingency.

Above Succubus 1965-6
polyester resin, glass fibre, brass 65 x 48 in.
Above left Drawing 1966, 22 x 30 in.
Left Drawing 1967, 10 x 8 in.
Facing page Oranges and Lemons 1966
168 x 72 x 50 in.
Courtesy: Grabowski Gallery