BasementArtsProject | DECADE: A Conversation with Kimbal Bumstead #2

This Is Our House. (Audio/Visual/ Performance/Installation) Kimbal Quist Bumstead. BasementArtsProject April 2011. Photo Kimbal Bumstead

BasementArtsProject began its journey in April 2011. After several years of exhibitions and leading the Peripheral Artist Collective, the decision was made to focus on trying to create a more permanent space. In doing so we could focus on developing relations with artists and finding ways to assist in the development of their creative practice, open doors to new and different opportunities and promote their work to the most diverse audience possible. In doing so we decided to give over our dilapidated basement to an ever-changing roster of artists at very different stages in their careers. A central precept to this activity was always that everyone would be given the same weight of importance whether they were an undergraduate or a more established artist.

Cover of Hypogeal publication covering a year of exhibitions leading up to our fifth anniversary. Copies still available at £10

After five years we were able to publish our second book which documented where we were at five years down the line from beginning the project. It still amazes me now that I am just starting to think about how we celebrate the dying embers of our first decade. For me, there was only ever one way that I wanted to do this, and I am so glad that when I proposed the idea to artist Kimbal Bumstead he said yes. 

Kimbal Quist Bumstead is a London based artist. His ouevre involves painting, drawing, sculpture, audio visual, photography, maps and plenty of travelling. Having worked with Kimbal on several occasions as part of our Peripheral group outings, I deceided to approach him about this idea that I had for an exhibition / project space in the basement of my home. Subsequently Kimbal was the first person to realise a project at BasementArtsProject

KQB (Right) meeting other performance artists back when we could travel. Stockholm Independent Art Fair Supermarket 2012

The global pandemic of 2020 blighted the programme of activity here at BasementArtsProject as much as it did for everyone else. Having opened the first exhibition programmed for that year we were forced to shut after two weeks re-opening in September only to be shut down again in October due to the local lockdown. It has been a year of Zoom meetings with artists, colleagues and even family members, with the rest of our six exhibitions due to happen in 2020 rescheduled across 2021 instead. Of course, we do not know what state the country will be in during 2021 so all dates are in the calendar pending the re-opening of the country.

One thing about the work of Kimbal Bumstead though, is the amorphous nature of his wandering practice, and here I do use the word wandering quite literally. For an artist with such a diverse palette of materials and styles you really do not know each time what you will get, or where it will come from.

What follows is part two of the continuing dialogue with Kimbal as we build ideas for the forthcoming ten year celebration . .

To read part one CLICK HERE

Bruce Davies | January 2021

Sunday 29th November

This week I made an important discovery. I have been looking at this painting for about 8 years, I think I made it in 2012. It never felt right, there was always something missing or lacking in the composition. It hung at my parents house most of the time, although I did show it once in 2013 at an exhibition. It may even have been the exhibition you came to..? in Bermondsey. Anyway, when my parents moved house last year I took the painting back thinking that I would work on it, change it and turn it into something new, working into it, maybe painting over it. But I started on the wrong premise. I wanted to keep what I liked and change what I did not. I wanted to keep the orangey textural bits and the crisp line that happened very accidentally when I swooped over the painting with my brush, dripping that nice black line… But I wanted to take away the reddish bit, and the blackish bit and various other bits… I toyed with the idea of cutting the painting, maybe giving it an unusual shape, re stretching it. In the end I chose to paint over it.

But still there was something wrong, I tried and tried and I couldnt get it right, there was something fundamentally wrong with the composition that I couldn’t fix. So once I felt like I had sufficiently ruined the painting with paint I took out my scalpel. 

The feeling of absolute liberation, creation through destruction is incredible. Just deciding to let go... It’s a hard thing for me to do as I get very attached to things, and I hoard, hoping that one day something might be useful… but recently I’ve been thinking a lot about scale. Particularly the fact that life is very local these days and also I have a very small space - which will get even smaller when I move out of my studio at the end of december. 

I feel like I am going down in size, like honey i shrunk the kids, zooming in to the micro…

As I cut into the surface of the canvas, I cut through layers of my own history, the layers of paint that I tried to fix… as it peeled and flaked, I felt layers of myself peeling off.. Breathing out a sigh of relief… i dont need this anymore. 

What I ended up with was the central part of the painting. The bit I always liked in the first place, the sumptuous textures that I was afraid to lose.

Have I really let go of something, or simply acknowledged what is important to me?

I don’t know the answer to that yet. But I realised that I have lost a little of myself, my exploratory nature, my playfulness, by becoming a painter.. I am not a painter but an artist who paints, among other things.

Deconstructing my painting made me remember the joy of playing with stuff, objects. Like a kid carving little cities into the soil with a stick in the school playground. Is this a regression? Perhaps, or perhaps its a reminder about circles, cycles, looking back at where it all comes from… what is my art about? 

I need to strip things back to the essentials. over the past 10 years I have got lost in the mantra of my endlessly rewritten artist statement.

The funny thing is that the bit I learned from - the cutting and the playing - I threw those bits away. Although they could have made interesting little artworks. I kept only the bit in the middle, and attached an eyelet. Now it looks like a piece of smoked mackerel hanging to dry.

Monday 7th December

A giant map consisting of tiny fragments.

A line that tells a story

Many traces 

Resonances

The Art of Mapping https://livingmaps.squarespace.com/completed-projects-2

Kimbal Quist Bumstead

Documentation of other work / projects by Kimbal Bumstead can be found at https://www.kimbalbumstead.com

Bruce DaviesBasementArtsProject