Neale Stratford

Profile

I always thought I was odd, strange and not quite normal. Never interested in sport or any other social interaction, I dislike meeting new people – always struck dumb with small talk unless I am with people that I know and know well. I have poor memory recall and loath change. Often I wander between the lines of fantasy and reality. This psychotic deviation is not black and white; a mental ‘Berlin Wall’ where you are either east or west, autistic or normal. My psychosis is like the tide, ebbing and flowing, an ephemeral obstacle that blends the reality with the fantasy, the delusion with the factual, mixing wanton desires with normal life aspirations. My psychologist diagnosed that I was Autistic. I have Asperger’s Syndrome.

Early Influences:

My first memory of television was in 1965 watching Superman (1951). Even from that early age, what I watched became part of my life. Most of my childhood accidents came about by tying a towel around my neck and pretending to fly. My worst experience was climbing to the top of a tall paling fence and diving head first into the ground. I knew I could fly – all I need was practice. I remember being allowed to sit up and watch the first Australian televised screening of King Kong (1933) back in 1973. Considered benign now, even 40 years after being made it was considered a horror classic. Planet of the Apes (1969) was a great influence on my fertile imagination, as was the first release of Star Wars (1977).

These cinematic influences played an important part of my life. You may see these as signs, important symbols that will appear within my artwork. E. H. Gombrich in his book Art & Illusion: A study in the psychology of pictorial representation explains that “For the world of man is not only a world of things; it is a world of symbols where the distinction between reality and make-believe is itself unreal”. By utilising these personal semiotics, I investigate my delusions and desires, my dreams and fantasies, understanding the infuriating puzzle that is me.

Artistic Influences:

Although I can name a broad list of artistic influence, I would like to give ‘honourable mentions’ to the following. Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746 – 1828), Jake and Dinos Chapman (1966 & 1962) and Ron Mueck (1958). Mueck’s work is inspirational. Mueck’s figures move beyond the ‘wax work’ manikin of a ‘likeness’ of a popular personality. No matter the scale, each sculpture seems alive – almost breathing. Every pore, hair, wrinkle, mole – human flaws (or flaws that make us human) is minutely rendered.

Goya has always fascinated me. A painter of extreme contradictions, he can show us gorgeous beauty and also terrible horrors worse than any ‘slasher’ film created today. Like Robert Hughes in his biography of Goya, I am also drawn
to the Spanish master by through the epiphany of my own malaise. I was about the same age as Goya when he was struck down with illness that finally left him deaf for the rest of his life. Like myself, Goya suffered from depression from the onset of his illness. Locked into his own ‘silent’ world, he started to create art not for his wealthy patrons but himself. Hughes writes “He had just been stricken down into the depressive’s nightmares predicament: cut off from the world and from intimate contact with others by a severe, undiagnosable, and incurable illness; alienated; lost within himself; desperately anxious to show that things were not as bad as they seemed, that nothing was deeply wrong, that he could still function as a man and an artist”.

Like Mueck, Jake and Dinos Chapman found their fame through the Sensation Exhibition of Young British Artists from the Charles Saatchi collection. The two brothers collaborating together for their art careers have been using ‘shock and awe’ as their tools of trade. From mutated sexual child manikins to toy soldier Nazi atrocities, from re-imaging of Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746 – 1828) prints to re-carving anthropological native statues with a post modern bent. The Chapman’s have been treading the fine line between deep psychological melodrama and disturbing fetishistic pornography. Christoph Grunenberg in his essay Attraction-Repulsion Machines: The Art of Jake and
Dinos Chapman comments “What really is really is disturbing in Jake and Dinos Chapman’s art are not the outward provocations of nudity, disease and violence but the underlying psychological meanings – the attacks on the whole body, the blurring of gender lines, the revulsion of the abject, the insinuations of sadism and the moral offences” and “At the heart of their work is the creative conversion of psychological processes, symptoms and disorders into convincing material form”.

I can talk about my fears and nightmares through my affinity with Goya. However, I use the visual language already created and employed by Jake and Dinos Chapman, a language I identify with, the language of toys and action figures. The Chapman’s have opened the gate; there is no reason not to return the favour and walk through it

Why do I make art from Toys?

With the use of toy figures, lighting effects I have developed and the use of specialist macro lenses, I have blended the artificial with the authentic, mixed the real with the uncanny. I can simulate life, even perceived personality where once it had never existed. My art making becomes an extension of the play of my childhood into the realm of adulthood and reality. Gombrich noted that “In the world of the child there is no clear distinction between reality and appearance” and “There is no rigid division between the phantom and reality, truth and falsehood, at least not where human purpose and human action come into their own”. For me, there is no rational difference between the child at play and an adult with Asperger’s dealing with life. It is sometimes hard to fathom the distinction between fantasy and the real.

From an early age, I have always been fascinated with toy figures. I was always more interested in the pilot than the model plane or the tiny toy passengers than the actual train set. Action figures have always been apart of my life. I would sit for hours playing with toy soldiers, always alone. Playing by myself was far more fulfilling than playing with others. I could control my play…no one to upset the intricate machinations of the fantasy world I created. In hindsight, I guess it was part of my ‘Aspergers’ that I found comfort playing with these toys where I could control the relationships between the figures – relationships that I found difficult to have in real life.

Not knowing the reason until recently, I have always had a trouble with recognising certain facial expression on people. It is not like that I don’t recognise happiness with a smile or sadness when someone is crying. It is a lot more subtle than that. Facial expressions like hurt, anger, confusion, sarcasm, etc are the hardest to pick. These mixed facial messages have always been a confusing enigma creating limitations on both my social and vocational side of life. When I was growing up it was the expressionless generic plastic faces of my toys that were just as meaningful to me as true to life faces as the adults that surrounded me. These limitations also impacted upon my understanding of gender roles while working in a male dominant industry for the first 15 years of my working life.

I also contrive tableaus by manipulating the figures into scenarios. I create photographic scenes that represent the autistic vagaries of my mind. Like Goya, I explore the internal psyche, a vision of a phantasmagoric dystopia, a never-world where my mind sometimes inhabits. Whereas Goya’s nightmares were created through the horrors of invasion of Napoleon in 19th Century Spain, my thoughts dwell in the 21st century and the ‘caprices’ of the modern world. My art is a subliminal subjective narrative – a disjointed allegory of my world in which I live. Now that I am aware of my ‘disability’, I begin an exploration of understanding my newly discovered identity, my role in the world, and the impact it has upon my life.

In Pinocchio (1883) by Carlo Collodi (1826 – 1890), Pinocchio’s (a wooden marionette) quest for humanity is finally granted when he was turned into a little boy after a series of adventures. The above examples of humanity emerging from the artificial have a correlation with my personal experience with Aspergers. Now like Pinocchio, I am on a quest to find my ‘own’ normality, my own realism. As my thoughts are mine alone I can only deal with my world only by the way I see it. My world, my reality.

My personal artificial ‘Lilliput’ is an attempt to create an understanding of how a person with Asperger’s syndrome thinks and feels. By using toy figures from popular culture (films, TV shows, video games,) gives the viewer a fragment of recognition, allowing participation and appreciation of the world I inhabit. Why do I make art from Toys? These figures are as dear to me as photographs are to ordinary people. Like ghosts embedded within the silver halide of a family snapshot, for me the figures are charged with emotive memory – a memento mori of past friends, some still here, and others long gone.

On reflection, over the years my dreams and delusions were a kind of coping mechanism dealing with my own inadequacies socially and/or academically. The fantasy world was a kinder place to dwell instead of the mundane reality in which we live. At least I hope the viewer will walk away with some understanding about mental illness and Autism. Hopefully, just hopefully they might glean some understanding about me.