Paul Majek: Losing a Home

The conversation

What is the work or body of work you’d most like us to consider for Future Archives?

I would most like you to consider my recent body of work from my solo exhibition ’Losing A Home’ curated by Rita Majek. Exploring memory, family archives, fluidity.

What question were you circling when making it?

I was circling questions around memory, disappearance, identity, and how much of a person I want to reveal or conceal.

How concrete do I want a figure to be? What do I want the viewer to project through them? I am interested in figures that are there and not there at the same time, and in the space between manifestation and disappearance.

The work draws heavily from archival imagery of my family, some dating back to the 1960s and 1980s, alongside figures that come from memory, dreams, previous works, drawings, paint, pastels, and the subconscious.

The figures are often spirits or shadows of themselves, wavering between visibility and disappearance. Some works stay true to the likeness of the person I am depicting, while others move away from likeness, with the figure becoming merged with its surroundings.

How does memory, preservation, disappearance or record-keeping sit inside the work?

Memory is something I have always been deeply invested in, but increasingly in its fleetingness and my relationship with my own memory: the things I decide to forget, the things I decide to remember, and the things I cannot control.

The archive is like a frozen memory from a distant past. It presents as steady or contained, but it is instead like water. It is ever changing, and it is almost by chance that it still exists decades after it was taken. There is something quite alluring about the archive. It is precious and sacred.

The visual archives I work from are mostly kept in good condition, but some have been damaged over time, bled into each other, or begun to tear. These traces enter the paintings in ways I cannot predict or control.

Is there a particular image, object, colour, surface or gesture in the work that feels central to you?

The colour I’ve been most drawn to throughout my recent body of work is fiery orange, alongside earthy red tones. I’m particularly interested in creating monochromatic worlds within these colours, as they embody a feeling and sensation that reflects what I’m experiencing in my life. They also resonate strongly with the themes I’m currently exploring in my paintings.

One of these themes is transformation and change. I visualise this change through imagery such as a sunrise or sunset, moments that suggest transition, movement, and the beginning or ending of something. The orange and red tones also evoke the feeling of walking through fire and emerging on the other side. For me, the colours therefore become a metaphor for transformation: intense, consuming, and at times challenging, but ultimately leading to a sense of renewal.

The archive is like a frozen memory from a distant past. It presents as steady or contained, but it is instead like water.

Paul Majek

Do you see the work as holding something personal, historical, imagined, or unresolved?

I see the work as holding all of these things. It is personal through my own memories, dreams, experiences, and my relationship to family. It is historical through the family archive and the intergenerational dialogue in the work.

The figures can come from my memory or dreams, from archives, from life, from drawings, from previous works, from paint, from pastels. One place they all derive from is internal truth, something spiritual, subconscious, and unknown.

I am always battling with choices around concealing and transparency. How much of a person do I want to share with others, as well as with myself? I do not always want the figure to be fixed or fully visible. I am interested in opacity and in allowing something to remain unknown.