Isle of Thanet

I was chatting to a curator who recently moved to Margate in Kent where the genesis of the idea for this series of paintings began. She mentioned how that area of Kent, including Margate, Broadstairs, and Ramsgate, used to be detached from the mainland; it was only in the 1600s that the river that separated the Isle of Thanet with the UK silted up and joined the two together. People who live in that part of the United Kingdom still refer to that area as ‘the Isle’. This idea has proved a starting point to make a set of paintings that considers what it’s like living on an island, what that might mean at this point in time.

(Nick Goss)

Nick Goss’s exhibition of new works at Perrotin Paris (his first solo show in Paris and with the gallery) has a history, or more precisely, a genealogy. Walpole bay is the product of numerous kinships and genetic peculiarities, whose lineage has been freely arranged by the artist’s imagination. The island’s name, Thanet, comes from the Greek Thanatos, the mythological personification of death. Goss allowed his mind to roam freely, marrying death and insularity while drawing inspiration from The isle of the dead, five paintings of the same subject created by Arnold Böcklin between 1880 and 1886. From a genealogical perspective, their relationship is that of a distant cousin: Goss did not copy Böcklin’s island but rather captured a “feeling” evoked by the series–the way the subject is framed and the general shape of the island. In the lower right, he added the bow of a motorboat: the framing of the scene suggests that we (the viewers) are standing on the boat, a strategy borrowed from Gustave Caillebotte’s La partie de bateau (1877) and various other Impressionist painters. The boat invites us to “enter” the scene (to board the painting!), like the intercessors in Flemish painting, and as we enter, the island’s rocky cliffs come into view. They reveal traces of screen–printed text (from the poem The waste land, written by T.S. Eliot during his convalescence in Margate in 1921) and drawings (people crossing the ocean borrowed from a 1558 engraving in the Walburg collection illustrating a 16th–century Italian poem, as well as motifs on a rug that Goss photographed and then screen–printed). The genealogy of Isle of Thanet also includes a plethora of sketches and cliff drawings made by the artist during his stays on the island.

The same genealogy is at work in En route (2024). Here, as Nick Goss tells me, “Fragments of textiles from photos I have taken from shops near my studio in East London, sections from comic books, photos of statues found in Pompei, images of a political meeting, hopefully, build up almost to a memory of civilization”. The work is also inspired by Miss Earhart’s Arrival, a 1932 painting by Walter Sickert the artist probably saw at the Tate and which itself is based on a photograph published on May 23, 1932, on the front page of the Daily Sketch (seven days before the work was completed) showing the arrival at Hanworth Air Park of Amelia Earhart–the first woman to fly across the Atlantic alone. Sun cafe is based on a work from the Walburg collection depicting “a scene unfolding in 1773 South Africa, Wolraad Woltemade and his trusty horse Vonk rescuing fourteen sailors from a shipwreck before being subsumed by the waves”. Goss connects these genealogical sources–with each other or with other completely invented elements, such as the seaside karaoke bar found in several works–using “Proust’s methods of movement”–the means by which he got one episode to lead into the next. “The ordering of events and scenes didn’t follow the demands of chronology, nor those of an unfolding linear plot. Instead, tangential thought associations, or the vagaries of memory seemed to move the novel from one section to the next. Sometimes the very fact that the present episode had been triggered by the previous one raised the question ‘Why?’ For what reason had these two seemingly unrelated moments been placed side by side in the narrator’s mind? I could now see an exciting, free way of composing my novel; one that could produce richness on the page and offer inner movements impossible to capture on a screen… I could put down a scene from two days ago right beside one from 20 years earlier, and ask the reader to ponder the relationship between the two”. Kazuo Ishiguro.

Goss creates his own paint using natural pigments and a binder that remains water–soluble after drying, following the classic tempera process. He combines this technique with oil painting and silkscreen, incorporating multiple techniques alongside the various genealogical elements. Consequently, just as we can’t identify all the sources behind the painting, we are unable to decipher all the methods used for its creation.

The use of “quotation” or “reprise” has become a common strategy in contemporary art, led by the music industry, from the sampling of the 80s to artists like Dua Lipa. This approach can also be seen in contemporary painting, where generations of joyfully uninhibited artists incorporate fragments of masterpieces (Magritte, Picasso, etc.) into their works. Often, the move is literally a matter of genealogy, a discipline historically used to highlight the nobility of one’s lineage. In Nick Goss’s case, the approach seems to serve a different purpose, akin to acupuncture: the multitude of sources are like little needles stuck into the skin of the painting, stimulating the depicted scene.

The main purpose of this genealogical density (the multiplication of sources and origins, the variety of inspirations) is seemingly to induce a kind of dizziness or drunkenness in the spectator, recalling the thought of French philosopher Clément Rosset. “In short, drunken perception can very aptly be described as a way of accessing the real,” he wrote in the 1977 Le réel, traité de l’idiotie (The Real, A Treatise on Idiocy). The drunkard has a simple perception, while the sober man’s is usually double. The drunkard is dazed by the presence before his eyes of something singular and unique, which he points to with his index finger, taking those around him as witnesses or to task if they object [...]. A simple thing, in other words, grasped as an astonishing singularity, as an unusual emergence in the field of existence. […] But what the drunkard perceives is, first and foremost, the thing in its very singularity, a uniqueness that makes it appear both as a miracle–which is why he rants and raves and draws the attention of passers – by to it – and as an unknowable, incomprehensible phenomenon.“Intoxicated by the various references and combined techniques (and unable to draw up an exhaustive list – for what purpose?), we, the spectators, are stunned, overwhelmed, and surrender to the “astonishing singularity” of the depicted scenes, whose “unusual emergence into the field of existence” we witness.

At the end of the day, that’s all that matters. This “astonishing singularity” is only accessible when detached from its technical and genealogical conception. Goss’s paintings are best experienced in a state similar to a psychoanalyst’s receptive ear – where the overwhelming storytelling that presides over their conception fades away to reveal the painting itself. This painting tells a very different story, as does the exhibition: stories of islands, boats, and the people on them. This is the only thing we know with any certainty : despite or thanks to the many genealogical references, nothing makes sense anymore, at least not in any singular sense. Goss takes literally Umberto Eco’s statement in his preface to The open work: “The work of art is a fundamentally ambiguous message, a plurality of meanings living together in one signifier”. In the first quarter of the 21st century, we are inundated with one–sided works of art focusing more on morality, information, or propaganda than poetry and fantasy. As a result, we have somewhat lost touch with extraordinary works that embrace ambiguity as a deliberate artistic choice. Goss’ work restores the viewer’s freedom and maturity : these people on these boats, who are they? Tourists or migrants, it’s up to us to see rather than know. And what kind of boats are they? Cruise liners, monstrous floating buildings weighing over 25,000 tons, recently banned from the Venice lagoon? The work is not a commentary on a situation but a vehicle for reflection.

Like in Bakers dolphin (2020), the characters in En route (2024) huddle together. Their fate remains unknown, and the only hint of drama comes from the framing of the scene. Goss’s paintings are like the islands they depict, isolated territories on the edge of the continent ; you need to know how to access them before abandoning yourself to their laws. Among the many references, Goss frequently alludes to the work of J.G. Ballard. For his 2019 exhibition Morley’s Mirror, he was inspired by The drowned world (1962), while Isle of Thanet at Perrotin is influenced by the short story collection Vermilion sands (1972). The English writer’s post – apocalyptic stories depict a planet destroyed by natural disasters and feature seemingly ordinary characters with hidden perversions and flaws. This should be remembered when standing before a Goss painting, so pleasant and discreet, almost bewitching. God knows what it hides.