Preview: Some new canvases from my VALA Journal essay (War & Peace), November 2023
Wrong Way. Go Back, Canvas 1 from my series ‘A Course in Complexity’, © Carl Gopalkrishnan 2023. To be published in November 2023 in VALA Magazine under the title: “A Field Manual for A Lost Soldier: William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell as a Course in Complexity”
These two canvases are part of 4 images I painted for my visual essay in VALA 5. Written for an international audience, it is a comparative reflection on William Blake's rather complex 1790s poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and the UK Defence Doctrine 2022 (UKDD), together with some philosophical classics which together create an alternate lens on new capabilities amidst current global, geopolitical tensions in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific of 2023.
Red Pill. Blue Pill, Canvas 2 from my series ‘A Course in Complexity’, © Carl Gopalkrishnan 2023. To be published in November 2023 in VALA Magazine under the title: “A Field Manual for A Lost Soldier: William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell as a Course in Complexity”
The canvas is titled Wrong Way. Go Back, and ‘Red Pill. Blue Pill’, © Carl Gopalkrishnan 2023. My visual essay expands on my previous AUKUS artworks and has a lot more to say about AI and offers a creative ‘tool’ to navigate both our public and private narratives around the nature of good and evil.
I hope it engages with people in both military and civil society, and especially that personnel within all levels of the UK Ministry of Defence will have a reflective read with an open mind to William Blake and poetry in general as relevant to our times. Please reach out to the Blake Society for more information on growing this dialogue.
It was a very challenging invitation to create both art and a 3500 word written essay simultaneously on this tough subject within a tight deadline, but I’m so glad I said yes, not least for the Trustees’ open-minded, warm and curious approach to my views as an Artists. I don’t take it for granted from where I come from. It is a gift and I thank you.
VALA 5 will be published in late November in London. It’s been a wonderful experience working so collaboratively with VALA’s various editors and I thank Sibylle Erle, Jason Whittaker and John Riordan for all their hard work on their prophetic 2023 themed issue War & Peace. I am so looking forward to seeing in its creative entirety and honoured to share the pages with so many esteemed Blake enthusiasts from around the world. Like them, I hope it makes a positive contribution at a very challenging time for us all.
I will post more when it is published with all the images and quotes from my essay. To learn more about VALA please email The Editor Sibylle Erle at: vala@blakesociety.org for further information, copies of previous issues or for permissions or to speak with The Blake Society.
[Updated 23rd November 2023]
New cover for VALA 4. The Blake Society, November 28th 2023
