Pastorale /
David Zwirner /
Hong Kong /
Sep 14 – Oct 28, 2023 /  

When Frank Walter was born in Antigua in 1926, the British had freed slaves on the island roughly 90 years before. Yet the wounds of humans owning humans had merely been scabbed over; the aches were persistent. Children and grandchildren of former slaves were part of a system of labour that still rhymed with the treatment of their forebears. 

Case in point: 22 years later, Walter was the first black man to become a manager at the Antiguan Sugar Syndicate. He wanted to improve the industry and give his fellow Antiguans fair pay and better working conditions. It was not a smooth path, but Walter did everything he could to make his homeland a better place, including tolerating the bigotry of racial prejudice in England, Scotland and Germany when he sought to learn new ways to farm. It’s easy to imagine that, upon returning to Antigua, Walter’s act of putting that knowledge into practice picked at those wounds.

How do you love the one place you call home when every acre is loaded with agony from the past, the promise of a better future always slightly out of reach?

For Walter, one solution was to create – painting, writing and composing music. He lived alone in the bush, brushing oils onto any scrap surface within reach, like cardboard repurposed from mosquito coil or Polaroid film boxes, as well as sketchpad covers and photographs. 

David Zwirner’s presentation of Walter’s paintings, Pastorale, featured more than 90 works by the polymath, many palm-sized or smaller. Walter painted Antigua’s natural landscape like he was writing love letters. He didn’t capture the majesty of green fields or the pristine blues of the sea, but instead shared the feeling of being there, on the hills or by the sea. 

In these small scenes, we see the artist depicting himself floating off the coast, the sky tinged red as a hurricane approached. Or we see terracotta roof tiles in the distance, indicating just how far Walter was from the more bustling parts of Antigua. He occasionally took inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints, showing flowers blossoming on branches, leaves draping and transforming as seasons changed, dry to wet to dry again. 

These oils don’t leave a strong visual impact. Their mark is more visceral, making the viewer imagine the caress of an ocean breeze or the fragrance of blooming hibiscuses, frangipanis and other wildflowers. A few scenes from European locales are interjected, with grazing sheep and lavender hills in Scotland peppered into the presentation.

Most of the artworks in Pastorale weren’t dated. The paintings are visual snippets of Walter’s observation from different corners of the island he called home. But beneath the brushstrokes was still a creeping discomfort. One work in the presentation was different from the rest: Introducing the New Breed (undated) consists of stencilled text on card stock that spells out the words of its title. When he was in Europe, racial discrimination made him feel alienated, while being at home in Antigua was a little too limiting, so Walter channelled his creativity into painting, poetry, music and other media. Perhaps the “new breed” was himself, or maybe the words referred to a next generation of young men and women who didn’t have to bear the same adversities as him.

Today, Antigua is vastly different from the island that Walter knew. Sugarcane is still cultivated and harvested, but more to produce ethanol than refine sugar. Tourism is now the main industry, with the island describing itself as “sun sea safe” as the Covid-19 pandemic tapered off, the line eventually replaced with the more evocative “the beach is just the beginning”. 

But many of the scenes in Walter’s paintings can still be identified. Parts of Bailey Hill, located in the southeastern part of the island where he built his home and studio in the early 1990s, are relatively unchanged. Pastorale was as much an exhibition with pretty landscapes as it was a commentary on what it means to be home, through the lens of a man who never seemed fully satisfied with how far he was able to go.

Featured image: Installation view, Frank Walter : Pastorale, David Zwirner, Hong Kong, September 14—October 28, 2023. Courtesy David Zwirner.

                                                                                                                                                                   

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Frank Walter
田園牧歌
卓納畫廊
香港
2023年9月14日至10月28日

Frank Walter在1926年出生於安提瓜，當時英國廢除了當地的奴隸制大約90年。然而人類把其他人類視為財產的創傷才剛剛結痂，傷痛仍在。前奴隸的孩子和孫子工作的處境與他們的長輩仍有不少相同之處。

其中一個例子就是：22年後，Walter成為了安提瓜糖業集團的首個黑人經理。他想提升行業待遇，給予他的同鄉公平的薪酬和更好的工作環境。這條路並不易行，不過Walter盡其所能去改善他的故鄉，甚至在尋找新的務農方法時忍下了在英國、蘇格蘭和德國遭受到的種族歧視。不難想像，Walter回到安提瓜後把新學會的知識融入工作時又會想起受過的傷害。

如果自己的家的每一個角落都充斥著過去的痛苦，而對未來的期盼卻總是實現不了，你如何去愛這個地方？

對Walter而言，面對的方法就是創作──繪畫、寫作和作曲。他獨自在田野間生活，會在任何平面上刷上油彩，例如用蚊香盒或寶麗來相紙盒改造的紙板，或寫生簿封面和照片上。

卓納畫廊為Walter的畫作舉辦的展覽「田園牧歌」展示了這位博學家超過90件作品，很多都是手掌大小或更小。Walter畫下了安提瓜的自然景觀，就像是一封封的情書。他畫的不是廣闊的綠色田園或蔚藍海洋，而是記錄了他在山上或海上時的感受。

在這些畫面中，我們可以看到這位藝術家描繪自己漂離海岸邊，天空 因颶風的接近染紅。又或許那是遠處屋頂的紅陶瓦片，代表了Walter與安提瓜繁華地帶的距離。他偶爾會在日本木刻版畫中尋找靈感，讓花朵在枝椏上綻放、樹葉隨季節凋零轉變，乾變濕濕又變乾。

這些油彩不會造成強烈的視覺衝擊。它們的色彩內斂，讓觀眾可以幻想海風的輕撫或盛開的木槿、雞蛋花和其他野花的香氣。當中又穿插了一些歐洲當地的風景，像是在蘇格蘭放牧的畫面和薰衣草山丘。

「田園牧歌」的大部分作品都沒有日期。Walter只是畫下了他在這個他稱之為家的小島上觀察到的各種畫面，但是他的筆觸下卻藏著一種不適感。其中一件作品《Introducing the New Breed 》(《引入新品種》) (未標註創作時間) 尤其不同，Walter在卡片紙上用鏤空的字體拼出作品的標題。當他在歐洲時，種族歧視令他感覺自己格格不入；當他在家鄉安提瓜時又覺得有點受束縛，所以他透過繪畫、詩詞、音樂和其他媒體釋放自己的創造力。也許「新品種」所指的就是他自己，又或許是指不用面對他曾經歷過的困境的下一代年輕人。

今天的安提瓜與Walter認識的那個小島已經截然不同。雖然人們仍然會栽種和收割甘蔗，但是比起精製糖，他們主要是為了生產乙醇。安提瓜現在的主要產業是旅遊業，當地人以「太陽、大海、安全」形容安提瓜，隨著新冠肺炎疫情好轉，他們現在改以另一句令人更有畫面的話形容安提瓜──「海灘只是開始」。

但是Walter畫中的很多場景現在仍存在。1990年代初時Walter在安提瓜的東南邊興建了自己的家和工作室，而那附近的Bailey Hill至今也沒什麼改變。「田園牧歌」的展品大部分都是美麗的風景，因為這個展覽就是從一個顯然從未完全滿足於踏足千萬里的人的角度，討論何謂家。