Postcards is a collection of works by Terry Flaxton featuring Autumn Dusk Cafe Scene, Postcards from Beijing and Mexico Landscaper of the Heart.
Terry Flaxton’s Autumn Dusk Cafe Scene, Venice was one of the first pieces of his that Sedition released. It was filmed at Café Paradiso inside the Giardini exhibition venue of the Venice Biennale. Flaxton details the scene: “Dusk is falling as is the desire to satiate yourself with art. No need any longer to try to understand the why and the how of it all and after a days work and pleasure - just like all the artists - you come and take a coffee with several Amaretti and watch the sparrows darting to and fro in the foliage surrounding this idyll, trying to get a crumb or two. Consuming art, consuming the world, consuming yourself and others. Consuming meaning – drifting, contemplating, feeling satisfied that regardless of the terror in the world there are moments when you can just sit and not think… just sit and watch. This is a beautiful and terrifying world but for this moment it is only beautiful. Into this island come two people of 80 years of age, dressed in black with red berets, she with a red belt and hat, he with a red bag and strap. They’re from Berlin. They know about style. They know about taste. They know about Art. They are so perfect they do not appear in this moving image piece, but in your mind only.”What Flaxton describes here in words could be written on the back of a postcard, instead he uses the moving image form as if a postcard in itself.
Postcards from Beijing is a video work by Terry Flaxton shot in Tian Tan Park, the Temple of Heaven on a Sunday in the summer when time stands still in a particular way. Sensing this, the artist’s only response is to place a camera without thinking, and allowing constructions of moments to occur on their own. For Flaxton, it is important not to compose the image, but to allow the image to compose itself.
In perfect synchronisation with the Tao, the moment inscribes itself within the image in a particular kind of way. Only if the self is subdued will the Tao measure the essence of the entwining of the dragon and the tiger such that their energies are enabled to become manifest. Those that view the result of this energetic exchange must not judge, nor interpret, as they too subdue the self.
The latest addition to this collection Mexico Landscaper of the Heart seeks to take the postcard form into a more interrogative form such that the culture seen and examined also acts as a commentary on contemporary world issues and asks the audience to experience the complexities and beauties of Mexico through Flaxton's lens, positioning it as a critical exploration of cultural identity and memory within a global art context and asks the audience "just where do you stand?" Terry wishes to note the influence of work Robert Cahen in his early developmental work Cartes Postales and Juste Le Temps.
