23—MARYLEBONE JOURNAL
CULTURE
It is the people in the objects who matter to me – the people, who have seen it or made it or held it in their hands. You can feel those forces
is why we’re talking – and then a synthesis, which will be your writing.” Flattered, I protest that his golden wonders are in a very different league to this article. Nevertheless Kevin kindly insists “it is the same process”. “What was Vanloo’s purpose in
making this painting?” he asks. “What do other interpretations add, like this box? I came away with the thought that it is actually about two senses – her’s of listening, his of looking. I found out that in Europe at the time they were known for that.” And from these ideas he created Penumbra 2 (not illustrated). Paintings are just one source of
inspiration for Kevin, whose work draws on everything from the Wallace Collection’s armour to its furniture. Another brooch, inspired by a Boulle cabinet, came about when Kevin found a cricket in its marquetry. Upon arriving back home he found another cricket – alive this time, and living under his porch. The ‘cricket’s eyes’ idea for the jewel, Monsieur Boulle’s Vistor (Penumbra 11), was born. To most of us this coincidence
would be just that – a coincidence, so insignificant as to not be worth
mentioning. Yet Kevin believes moments like this are what make art “a synthesis of what the world has or is saying.” The title, Time Regained, is a reference to Proust, whose writings on time Kevin has always admired. Used here it refers to the process of transmutation, from a specific moment – a music performance, a paint stroke – to the memory of the audience. Yet long before this exhibition Kevin was obsessed with the slippery subject of time. “It is fundamental to what I do,”
he says, “time, and its passing, and the people,” like the thumbprint of Poussin in A Dance to the Music of Time. “That painting has been inspiring me long before I was asked to be associate artist, where you can see where Poussin has pressed his thumb down into the wet primer. It’s a moment in time, but it’s one which has lasted centuries. I find that incredibly moving.” He’s not the only one – after all, it’s
a stony sort of person who can’t find a secret thrill in an original manuscript, or a set of really worn stairs. Who has been here, we ask ourselves, and put their foot where mine is? Where
were they going, and why were they here? This sense of immediacy, of connection to the past is universal – and it is the touchstone of Kevin’s work. “It is the people in the objects who
matter to me – the people, who have seen it or made it or held it in their hands. You can feel those forces – they have clues to find and each one is a book, there to decipher.” Whether it’s the “exquisite” horse
armour whose original use Kevin finds “so deeply upsetting”, or his own 17th century violin, which “could have been played by Mozart – one of its owners was a great friend of his”, each object Kevin touches finds its self and its history in the art Kevin creates. “Only connect” is his motto – but
EM Forster’s great epithet could also be said to be the Wallace Collection’s raison d’etre. “We have this fear that art in the Wallace is somehow elitist, because it was commissioned by a high stratum of society. Well that’s true – they were – but those material values are false ones. The true values are the same for us all. It is the objects themselves that matter, and the ideas that they awaken in our soul – and we haven’t had to pay anything for that.”
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