Here We Are in Croydon 1979

Curator: Right, let's turn our attention to Howard Hodgkin’s, shall we say, evocative “Here We Are in Croydon,” from 1979. It's oil on… something that looks almost like heavy paper, or maybe a very thin canvas. The print element adds another layer of intrigue, don’t you think? Editor: Immediately, I'm struck by the enclosed feeling. That brick-red border—almost aggressive in its brightness—pinches everything in the center, like the memory of a very fraught social encounter. Curator: Fraught Croydon! Well, Hodgkin’s whole thing, as I see it, is these bursts of memory and feeling captured as pure sensation. There is something so deeply personal that he evokes so succinctly using this color and form; almost synaesthetic. Editor: Agreed. And looking closely, that insistent border—its raw, visible brushstrokes create a frame-within-a-frame effect. We are doubly removed from… what exactly? Some inchoate emotional drama painted on a dark and hazy background? Curator: It’s almost performative in its construction; it builds these visual stages for moments, encounters, or sometimes, places that aren't meant to be represented directly. More evoked. You know, there’s always that push-and-pull in Hodgkin's work – abstraction that’s so deeply rooted in emotional, even anecdotal experience. Editor: You are right, anecdotal, it's a perfect way to look at it. Thinking about its form, the large central shapes seem caught in a silent battle for dominance with an energetic framework—leading the eye again and again around the whole of the picture plane, trapped within this cycle of anxious revisiting, I guess. It is as if memory itself is both subject and cage in equal measure. Curator: Well put. “Here We Are in Croydon” – it could be anywhere, really. A moment captured, framed, and forever simmering on the surface of the paint. It really does ask you to just… feel. What did Howard really capture in 1979. Editor: A rather potent, and beautifully rendered feeling of entrapment if I may say, though maybe more metaphorical than Hodgkin ever intended. Still very intriguing, though!