Our Eyes Will Dance

About

Courtney’s art practice explored the human condition. He expressed the importance – and joy – of making work, and of making work with other people. Across drawings made painstakingly with pen on paper, with film, performance and also sculpture, Courtney’s wide-ranging practice poses questions about how we live and how we live together.

Partial bodies or features of bodies, or bodies bound up, explore a sense of being tethered and fragmented. They also explore a sense of fluid identities – not conforming to one gender or ethnic identity. Partially covered faces or eyes convey a sense of not being able to face a visual reality, preferring instead, at least initially, to use other senses.

Courtney didn’t use sketchbooks but instead developed an image over days and weeks before finally committing it to paper. With a wry smile he noted that the works may not turn out as he expected, and that he had to challenge himself to accept these changes. For Courtney, it was important to develop a good relationship with an artwork, to live with it, developing each work over time. He took huge enjoyment in colour, remarking seriously that he ‘fizzed with excitement with it’. The texture in his work was important too, ‘the cross hatching gave [my works] a more fabric texture so it was like the warp and weft of my own life’.

The darker photographic performance-based series of images saw him cover up his own face or body, distorting, hiding, and holding a mask to a darker reality beneath. Courtney’s work was very seductive and, at times, joyful yet there was always a controlled element to compositions across the paper surface. The photographic works’ aesthetic feels more sinister, with expressions of pain and acute sorrow in comparison to the pen and ink drawings. This work used projections of his drawings over his face and body to explore layers of protection, illustrating his armour to the world.

This exhibition will showcase the full range of Courtney’s work, including his drawings, video works and films of him discussing his practice. It was curated by Amanda Glynn and Josip Lizatovic with Sue Morgan.