Just What is It?
Janice McCullagh
What’s the story? Kelly Duffield’s works of the last two years invite narrative. The “Untitled” mixed media collages depict domestic settings in a most peculiar world. To describe these spaces is to enter the realm of fantasy. Set on a shallow stage against subtly painted backgrounds, figures, furniture and objects are collaged from the world of commercial magazines, or appropriated and painted, in a style that is realistic, precise and detailed. Backgrounds, though uniformly flat, are deceptively beautiful, created with transparent layers in soft even tones, subtly receding in austere spaces. Did I mention the people often have flowers where their heads should be, or more likely, not where their heads should be? Gravity is selective in this household. “Heads” float, people too. Things, and animals, and some bodies experience weight. Sometimes a dog looks on as silent witness. Real string is glued to the paper and can tether flower-heads or butterflies to bodies. Thank goodness: it is as if things are held together by a string.
What kind of family is this? They are clean, contemporary and sophisticated, as one might expect from a household sourced from Scandinavian design magazines. Space is stepped back in shallow overlapping planes. Things are presented frontally and in profile on nearly square spaces. The square frame, like a solid house, supports the family stage. One can exit, through levitation. Within these controlled worlds, there are no faces to convey emotion, so images resist easy narrative, even while asking for interpretation. Scenes confront the viewer, working in a less cinematic way (where one might readily imagine what happened before and after), and more photographically (like a conjured memory). The collaged elements emphasize detachment, even as the oddness of this strange land offers a uniquely personal perception.
Where does this language come from? The works present like language, built of discrete parts. I am reminded of a rebus, where one struggles to decipher the mixed languages. Can Child + Dog + Couch = home sweet home (see fig. a)? The genealogy of this visual vocabulary finds modernist beginnings in Surrealism (dreams) and Dada art (nonsense). Duffield’s collages might also ask, as Richard Hamilton’s seminal Pop art collage does in its title, Just what is it that Makes Today’s Homes so Different, so Appealing? (1956, Tate, London) Those artists however, dealt with different issues. Duffield references today’s woman and the struggles of contemporary family life. The artist illustrates her story, but we must puzzle it out. There is no clear story line, so as we read what is happening, the story becomes our own.
It might be constructed like this (see cat. 1): This is the day that girl-child got a balloon and her animal toys were lined up. She was as sweet as a flower blossom, but there was the knife, which might be dangerous. Or (see cat. 3): Remember the day all three flower-head kids were on the sofa, but none of them sat down or were fully present and the flower-mom just flew away. These scenes are about physical space and mental space. Both are insistently present and balanced.
Duffield’s works are dream-like. Sound is minimal, muffled in the airless space. Movement is slow motion. With no light source or shadows, we find ourselves in a timeless space. This is a world of order, where the artist has left nothing to chance. But nothing makes sense. People are defined by their roles and kids are the featured actors. Animals are personal symbols, like friends who might ask difficult questions.
The viewer is left to understand the story, not logically, but subjectively. There is humor in this craziness. Untitled III, 2019 (cat. 8) shows a silly character confronting a peacock in a world of flying chairs, but the collages of 2019 have become simpler. These dramas are slightly uncomfortable, like a dream-space where one can really only watch events, and not control them. It is the tension between the control of image and the chaos of the events that creates content.
Same Same I, 2019 (cat. 2) is the large acryla gouache and colored pencil version of Untitled V, 2019 (fig. a). At 42 x 40 inches, it is an ambitious amplification of scale, as well as a transformation of medium (i.e. there is no collage). The artist meticulously scales up her work with the precision of a miniaturist. You are witnessing gifts of time and patience. The fierce focus required is where the artist goes to crystallize whatever this is. The Same Same title again offers no interpretive clues, but it does remind us that small is not the same as large. Hanging large on a wall, the scene is less precious, more bold, but equally intense, Same Same. Large, the family dramas become part of our personal and physical space. I welcome these reminders that life is not predictable. The tension between what can and cannot be controlled is central to every family drama, especially when kids are at play. Duffield’s works remind us that we live in Dada times, where making sense and following rules must be reconsidered. Be prepared to lose your head.
ABOUT THE WRITER: Janice McCullagh is an art historian and artist. Retired after 30+ years of university teaching at Baylor University and University of Nebraska, she currently lives and works in Boulder, Colorado. She has many published articles on modern art, primarily on German Expressionism, her specialty. Her most recent publication is The Look Homeward, Angel Illustrations of Lew Tilley (2019).