NAME: Carl Gopal (Gopalkrishnan)
BIRTH PLACE: Sid Cup Kent, UK
BIOGRAPHY
UK-born Carl Gopal (aka Gopalkrishnan) is a painter working in acrylic, mixed media and photography. Writing is also part of his the process, with many of Carl’s texts appearing on his canvases. Most recently he has contributed an essay to the Virginia-based international artists’ journal The Daily Chronicle (2008). Social and political commentary has become central to his paintings since 2001.
Carl has explored educational legislation in the US with cover art for Social Policy Magazine (artwork on the review of The No Child Left Behind Act by Congress in 2007) in New Orleans. He questioned anti-terrorism legislation with his cover photograph for international experimental arts journal Front Magazine in 2008 in Vancouver, Canada. More recently Carl’s art was featured in Indonesian arts and culture magazine Drexter (2009); New York literary journal Literal Latte (cover art and gallery feature, 2009); and the UK’s leading queer literary journal Chroma (a painting of President Obama, 2009).
Carl hasn’t taken the traditional road in his art practice and, though he spends much time on reflection and research, he still describes his instinctual approach to painting as closer to Outsider traditions. His Indian and Chinese heritage has also instilled in him a respect for art inspired by spirituality and Consciousness. It is a contradiction he feels comfortable with.
“I knew a long time ago that I mixed things up more than others. I mix mediums, concepts, words and processes and they all come out at once. It’s not logical to others, but to me, well, it makes perfect sense. But it takes real work, and as you delve deeper you focus on quality. These days I might only produce anywhere between 12-20 paintings a year, but they are resolved pieces, completed thoughts. The process is all on the canvas.”
The Road Less Travelled
Starting out as a typographer/fabric designer in the 80s and then working in an art gallery for several years in the early 90s, Carl evolved his own creative process. Over the years he added academic studies in sociology and politics to his self-taught technique, often spending months in research, reflection and experimentation before touching a canvas. Striving to explore the murky divide between history, personal experience and metaphor, he has found himself exploring what consciousness really means.
These questions drove his 2006 exhibition, Sedition and Other Bedtime Stories. It was a ‘child’s exploration of anti-terrorism legislation’ in Australia, but also a journey through archetypal symbols in today’s political rhetoric. He later turned his lens to quantum physics and its effects on our internal narratives in his exhibition We’ll Always Have Paris – bent tales from the sub-atomic in 2008. Unlike most art/science collaborations, he explored ordinary stories, and the way we construct our realities. Carl also returned to his earlier urban roots and began mixing stencils, spray and printmaking with his more traditional painting tools.
Among his recent projects are a series of canvases exploring the new Obama administration in the US. It’s less of a messianic deliberation on Obama than an ensemble piece exploring how this new administration may affect our lives. It has irony and humour - the new chief-of-staff changes species along the way. And complexity as Carl struggles to understand the mythic energies arising between people in the world at this time in history, especially in the Middle East peace process.
Carl works from his studio in Perth, Western Australia.
