| Description: | As a child I was brought up under the Catholic faith and went to a Catholic school, as were my parents and grandparents. Glasgow has always had strong religious fractures between Catholics and Protestants, religion and monarchy. My mum told me a story about how the dance hall she went to as a teenager in Glasgow was closed as bombs were being stored under the dance floor for the IRA and how a very shy boy she once met there was later imprisoned for his involvement in an attempted kidnapping of the Queen mother. It seems strange to me now how I let these things wash over me as a child, especially since I was growing up during a time when the IRA were carrying out such violent bombings in the UK during the 80s and the 90s. With this in mind I can understand how religious sectarianism can quite easily become normality and in turn to nostalgia.
After analysing and responding to Eastern European nostalgia, is seemed rather hypocritical not to then look at my own personal nostalgia as well as that of the culture around me. We generally regard Britain as being tolerant, inclusive and peaceful; I was there for quite taken aback when I realized that the last even member of Royalty to be murdered was in Britain, in 1979. I had heard of the Mountbatten bombing yet I didn’t realise quite how resent it was or know about Lord Mountbatten’s Grandson Nicholas or much about Paul Maxwell either, both of whom were also killed. Previous to this the last members of Royalty murdered were the Romanovs in Russia. I knew about this, everyone in Britain probably does yet very few would recognise an image on Nicholas Mountbatten as they would Alexi Romanov. The Russian people feel such guilt for the murders of the Romanovs that they canonised them as saints yet in Britain, even the man who actually carried out theses killings, freed from jail in 2009 shows no remorse. Due to the suppression and subversion of information during the Communist reign in Eastern Europe Russians along with most other Eastern Europeans have a tendency to analyse and question their past as well as their nostalgic impulses? In Britain although I think we would regard ourselves as a nostalgic nation, would say this in a light hearted way, we are generally very unaware of the dangers of these nostalgic impulses, they are in our homes and are with us every day yet we rarely question them and really question why such fractures exist within British society. This unwillingness to analyse what may be causing them is part of the cause itself.
This painting is my attempt to start this process with myself. A portrait of the twins I didn’t know about and of how these events are with us in our homes, even if we aren’t aware of them. Hopefully I shall continue this project after my MFA.
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