Henry Hussey 'We Live in the Remains of the Gods'

H E N R Y H U S S E Y W E L I V E I N T H E R E M A I N S O F T H E G O D S

A nihilist is a man who judges of the world
as it is that it ought not to be, and of the
world as it ought to be that it does not
exist. According to this view, our existence
(action, suffering, willing, feeling) has
no meaning: the pathos of ‘in vain’ is the
nihilists’ pathos – at the same time, as
pathos, (there is) an inconsistency...
Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Will to Power”

“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise,
don’t even start. This could mean losing
girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even
your mind. It could mean not eating for three
or four days. It could mean freezing on a
park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean
derision. It could mean mockery -- isolation.
Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of
your endurance, of how much you really want to
do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the
worst odds. And it will be better than anything
else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go
all the way. There is no other feeling like that.
You will be alone with the gods, and the nights
will flame with fire. You will ride life straight
to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight
there is.”
Charles Bukowski, Factotum
Hussey states “I have killed Henry over and
over again, because the only way to grow as a
person is being willing to sacrifice what you hold
dear and identify with, to eliminate the qualities
which over time get in the way, stripping the ego
in order to progress.”
At a time of crisis, a palpable murmur
arises, suggesting to many of us that if we
rip down the established order perhaps we
could re-form a pure new world of optimistic
possibility. Ah, but what happens when we
meet the first person who doesn’t agree
with our new world vision? Well, to create
any substantial societal change, first we
probably need to accept and allow for a
dose of anarchy, and perhaps a little dash of
bloodshed. If there are those that stand in
the way of the potential of our utopia, maybe
it’s off to the work camps, or perhaps we just
eliminate them and make the issue go away…
If you look throughout human history any
significant change, usually results in atrocity.
Friedrich Nietzsche approached the problem
of nihilism as deeply personal, stating that
the predicament of the modern world is
a problem that has “become conscious” in
him. According to Nietzsche, it is only
when nihilism is overcome that a culture
can have a true foundation upon which to
thrive. ‘We Live in the Remains of the Gods’
alludes to the pre-existence of our collective
foundation. Hussey cites huge rises in
cases of depression resulting from personal
isolation as a sickness within our society
and vulnerability of our species. “We need
something to believe in” he states. “Whether
it’s the weather God, family, meaning, purpose,
sun deity, a man on a cross… having belief is
an inherent part of our humanity. All humans
have a black hole inside ourselves, which must
be filled to nullify the pain. We have tried, and
largely failed to fill it with consumerism and
capitalism… We all need purpose and meaning
to sustain our existence, as that’s the only thing
that makes the suffering worthwhile.”
In 2016, Hussey began making reactionary
work, he states that he had “stopped believing
in what he was saying”. Having read a book
about the atrocities of the 20 th century titled
‘Maps of Meaning - The Architecture of Belief’
by Jordan B Peterson, the conclusion that
the he came to, was rather than trying to use
a collective ideology to change the world,
instead you change yourself. So you must
attempt to remove all the suffering from
your own existence and build your own life
on solid ground before attempting wider
change. The immediate result is to help the
closest people around you, who may in turn
be compelled to try to change and alleviate
their own suffering and then in turn help
others, creating a chain reaction. This form
of individualism has the potential to lead to
the benefit of all. Prior to this point Hussey’s
work could be seen to represent an egoistic
belief that his personal narrative represented
the universal. Yet the work in this exhibition
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indicates a rotation of thought, where the
universal is represented through the personal
experience, and becomes an acknowledgement
of one’s own humility.
‘We Live in the Remains of the Gods’ is loaded
with archetypical and symbolic, cross cultural,
imagery and ritual, which Hussey uses as a
way to examine truth and reveal our shared
foundations. This search runs deep, as Hussey
suggests that it is something we are now
lacking as a society; “when a culture lacks truth
and lies collectively, what typically happens to
it throughout history, is that there is a fall or
flood or destruction. I’m using this imagery as
a warning, that when you embrace falsehood,
you’re not just betraying yourself, you are also
putting society at risk.”
For Henry, his form of individualism takes
the form of sacrifice, which is a central
theme to the work, that you must be willing
to give everything, even the most intimate
parts of yourself, in order to obtain your
vision. It is a vision explored in multi-media,
where each material choice is selected for
its conceptual weight and potential. Part
of the reason he enjoys working with craft
mediums, which are technically proficient
methods, is that they require skilled expertise,
which can then be undermined or corrupted
with unexpected action or imagery. Hussey’s
works are first exquisitally constructed and
then become subjected to irrevocable actions
upon them. Textile is a utilitarian medium
that has been used throughout history to
proclaim and present the significant
moments in a civilisation. It carries with it
a way to emblazon important messages and
unite towards a common cause. Glass is an
extraordinarily physical medium that you
cannot walk away from once the process
begins. Once cooled, it becomes solid and hard
yet when pushed it breaks, an analogy which
fits the human condition perfectly. The glass
works (representing Saints and Martyrs) have
been put through extreme acts of violence
in their genesis, yet uphold a moral virtue.
The monoprints developed, and were inspired
by, the immediacy of the glass making process.
They primarily reference sculpture from
Greek and Roman antiquity, yet are also
seen as various aspects of self portrait. The
finality of the process, as once it has gone
through the press it is done, is appealing
in its honesty, openness and vulnerability.
The film works are expanded from dreams
which have been fused with elements from
mythological and religious stories. Hussey is
naked, front and centre in these works, yet
he is playing a character and inhabiting a
role, where universal ideas are represented
through the most personal of spectrums.
Expanding from his use of performance in
his work, they are captured, yet ephemeral,
which allows him a wider exploration than
the physical mediums can allow in isolation.
For Hussey a commonality between mediums
is a learning of, and expansion beyond, the
accepted boundaries of that medium, to take
it in its pure form and brutalise it revealing
its capabilities, strength and vulnerability.
Beauty and barbarism seem like accurate
representations of human duality, and allude
to a blossoming deriving from pain.
I ask Henry what he hopes people will think
of this challenging exhibition, he answers
“I am willing to alienate everyone because I
know it is right and the decisions I am making
are the correct ones. I think the past few years
have made me far more formidable as an artist.
I think the show is about history and culture
and the cyclical nature of it and you need to
have respect for the past, even when you’re in
the midst of heated exchanges, you need to take
a step back and look at the wider picture, not
just of the current situation but how the situation
has been played out throughout human history…
I just read that back, and it sounds like I am
talking about Brexit doesn’t it?!” He isn’t… A
long line, when followed, leads us from the
present to the origins of our collective and
personal mythology.
Joseph Clarke, 2019
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Bleed Me Dry
Digitally Printed Linen and Canvas, Dyed Hessian, Dyed Yarn, Bleached Velvet, Screen-Print, Embroidery
260 x 130 cm
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Idolatry
Screen-Printed Flag
190 x 125 cm
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The Best And Worst Parts Of Ourselves (Diptych)
Screen-Printed Flag, Dyed Linen, Dyed Yarn, Embroidery
165 x 95 cm each
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The Sickness
Screen-Printed Flag
145 x 120 cm
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Bloodlines
Digitally Printed Hand Woven Fabric, Dyed Hessian, Dyed Yarn, Screen-Print, Embroidery
300 x 130 cm
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Deathbed
Altar Cloth, Digitally Printed Linen, Hessian and Hand Woven Fabric, Dyed Linen, Dyed Yarn, Embroidery
240 x 270 cm
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The Past
Digitally Printed Linen, Dyed Linen, Dyed Yarn, Screen-Print, Embroidery, Dyed Rope, Glass, Steel Pole
265 (H) x 145 (W) x 40 (D) cm
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Untitled (Female Torso I)
Black Glass
32 (H) x 17 (W) x 11 (D) cm
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Untitled (Female Torso II)
Black Glass
33 (H) x 20 (W) x 12 (D) cm
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Untitled (Black Herma II)
Black Glass
51 (H) x 18 (W) x 19 (D) cm
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Untitled (Black Herma I)
Black Glass
51 (H) x 9 (W) x 15 (D) cm
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Untitled (Black Hermaphrodite I)
Black Glass
32 (H) x 26 (W) x 18 (D) cm
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Untitled (Black Hermaphrodite II)
Black Glass
47 (H) x 21 (W) x 13 (D) cm
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Untitled (Black Hermaphrodite III)
Black Glass
46 (H) x 18 (W) x 16 (D) cm
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HENRY HUSSEY
WE LIVE IN THE REMAINS OF THE GODS
“I keep making the same mistakes.”
This is the pivotal line in ‘Change’, the
two-channel semi-autobiographical short
film included in Henry Hussey’s new
solo exhibition ‘We Live in the Remains of
the Gods’.
Hussey is a man animated and sustained
by an almost megalomaniacal conviction of
the universal nature of his own personal
struggle. Is humanity doomed to repeat
its mistakes? He invites us to take that
possibility seriously by looking at the world
through the lens of ‘archetypes’ – the Jungian
hypothesis that all humans share a collective
unconscious whose building blocks can only
be inferred indirectly from our stories, art,
myths, religions, and dreams.
Some tropes appear again and again in
civilisations across time and place: the
nourishing mother, the hero, the trickster,
the strong man, the apocalypse, the deluge,
the creation, the ultimate sacrifice, God.
It’s fair to say that Jung’s ideas have been
somewhat superseded in the day-to-day
practice of contemporary psychotherapy,
but nevertheless one possible explanation
for the near ubiquity of certain motifs and
complexes is that people have an innate
predisposition to respond to, organise and
interpret the world in a certain way - the
psychic counterpart of instinct, analogous to
Chomsky’s theory of the language acquisition
device and a Universal Grammar that is
genetic rather than learned.
It is never totally clear whether, ultimately,
Hussey is an optimist or a pessimist. On the
one hand, his wading through the detritus of
half-remembered myths, inherited legends
and fragments of faded grandeur seems to
be a suggestion that the Enlightenment is,
at best, a work in progress. On the other
hand, there is the glimmer of hope that
culture itself is the way out of the cycle
of hubris and nemesis. Having complexes
is not pathological, as everyone has them.
What is pathological, however, is thinking
that we don’t. Jung clarifies, “Everyone
knows nowadays that people ‘have complexes’.
What is not so well known, though far more
important theoretically, is that complexes can
have us.” Perhaps Hussey’s message is that
we don’t need to get rid of our complexes:
we just need to become consciously aware
of them.
Knowing oneself is always likely to require
some prolonged self examination and an
element of delayed gratification. If there is
a convoluted and time-consuming process
for image-making then Hussey has probably
given it a go. He burst onto the art scene
a few years ago with his confrontational
textiles, which, through their intricate and
labour-intensive nature, have tended to hint
at the determined, intense, slow-burning
rage required to see them through. To those
works he has added a sophisticated yet raw,
series of glass sculptures and monoprint
drawings, both of which involve a revelling
in the tension between fits of passion,
spontaneity and even violence, and patient
craft skills. The works on paper and in glass
share a satisfyingly complementary sense of
translucent solidity arrived at by accretion
of marks and material. In the same way
that Hussey’s macho sewing deliberately
plays against the expectations of gender
constructs, so too do these gorgeous glass
forms, tempting the viewer into categorising
them with Jean Paul Gaultier’s fragrance
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ottle paradigms of ‘homme’ and ‘femme’,
while embodying a fluidity that speaks to a
more complex reality.
There is significant unwelcome pressure on
artists working today to rise to this historical
moment and make expressly ‘political’ o r,
even worse, ‘useful’ art. A couple of years
ago, Henry made the deliberate decision to
turn away from the autobiographical and
self-indulgent in favour of a more literal
commentary on current affairs – something
he now feels has not dated well. ‘Idolatry’
is a work which purges one such ‘mistake’
by condemning the old work to the verso,
flipped and replaced with a form of self
portrait and with it an insight borrowed from
second-wave feminists that the personal is
political because the person is political. ‘The
Best And Worst Parts Of Ourselves’ diptych
makes even more ambiguous use of the limp
polyester Union flags that punctuate the high
street in Hussey’s home town of Weybridge
with plastic patriotism. The Masonic Eye of
Providence atop both of the figures creates
a cyclops common to tales from Odin to the
Odyssey and a host of places a long way from
leafy Surrey.
By wrestling with the archetypal patterns
through the symbols they manifest in the
psyche, Hussey is grasping at an expansion
of consciousness. Such an expansion, Jung
believed, was of paramount importance,
for as he put it, “Man’s task is…to become
conscious of the contents that press upward
from the unconscious. […] As far as we can
discern, the sole purpose of human existence is
to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”
And that’s also the thing about mistakes – if
you throw them on the fire they’ll generate
light for you.
Jon Sharples, 2019
Jon Sharples is an art lawyer, broadcaster
and independent curator. He is on the boards
of Block 336 and the Liverpool Biennial.
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The All Seeing Eye
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
30 x 21 cm
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Vessel
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
30 x 21 cm
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Warrior
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
30 x 21 cm
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Buried I
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
30 x 28 cm
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Buried II
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
30 x 28 cm
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Buried III
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
30 x 28 cm
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Buried IV
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
30 x 28 cm
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Buried V
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
30 x 28 cm
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Buried VI
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
30 x 28 cm
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Buried VII
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
30 x 28 cm
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Goddess
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
42 x 30 cm
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Implement
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
42 x 30 cm
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Medusa
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
42 x 30 cm
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Shroud
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
42 x 30 cm
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The Great Man
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
42 x 30 cm
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Marysas
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
76 x 56 cm
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Prometheus
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
76 x 56 cm
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Post-Coital
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper
76 x 56 cm
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Biography
‘We Live in the Remains of the Gods’
is Henry Hussey’s most ambitious solo
exhibition to date. It is his second solo
exhibition at Anima Mundi following ‘You
Cant Outrun This’ in 2017.
Hussey is a British artist born in London
in 1990 where he still resides. His artworks
are emotionally raw, created primarily
through the paradoxically laboured and
intricate mediums. His textiles utilise a
collage technique of embroidery, appliqué,
digital printing, and silkscreening. He
often uses vintage fabrics that imbue his
artworks with a physical and symbolic
weight, weaving history into his works.
Hussey draws inspiration, particularly in
his word based pieces, from historical
union banners akin to those used
during the British miners’ strikes, for
their palpable conviction and guttural
impact. Whether through an expanding
vocabulary of quasi-mythological symbols,
or embroidered lines of text extracted
from weighted performative situations,
he explores both personal, national and
universal identity, often in response to
aggravating relationships and events. The
dramatic and intense impression created
by these works is heightened by a vibrant
and bold palette, which is used to both
reinforce its narrative as well as underline
the labour-intensive aspect of his practice.
The resultant larger-than-life scale
artworks have a commanding presence,
both reverential and awe-inspiring.
Further developments have ensued with
other materials including glass, bronze
and monoprint revealing a deeper concern
with control and chaos and the sweet spot
in between these two distinctive states.
Hussey studied Textiles at Chelsea College
of Art before completing an MA in Textiles
at the Royal College of Art. His work is
widely respected and has been exhibited
in notable exhibitions including The
Textiel Biennale 2017 at Museum Rijswijk
in the Hague, a solo presentation at Art
Central in Hong Kong, the Bloomberg New
Contemporaries in 2014 at the Institute
of Contemporary Art in London, the
Royal Academy London and Volta New
York and the Young Talent Contemporary
Prize at the Ingram Collection in 2016.
Hussey has participated in residencies
at La Vallonea, Tuscany, Italy in 2018 and
will participate in a residency at Palazzo
Monti, Milan in 2020. His work is held in
collections worldwide including Simmons
& Simmons, Hogan Lovells, The Groucho
Club and Soho House.
Self-Portrait
Oil-Based Monotype on Paper . 76 x 56 cm
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Zennor
Digital Video
Duration : 9 minutes
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Change
Digital Video
Duration : 11 minutes
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Published by Anima Mundi to coincide with Henry Hussey ‘We Live in the Remains of the Gods’
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