caput mortuum
AFTER THE FIRE
The Latin term Caput Mortuum is an alchemical reference meaning ‘Worthless remains’. These ‘remains’ are the product of the Blackening, the initial purification stage of the Nigredo: the breaking down of the existing substance. The material is subjected to ‘Mortificatio Putrefactio, Calcinatio and Dissolutio and transformed into a black uniform substance, leaving the Caput Mortuum as an unwanted residue.
‘The process is slow, repetitive, effortful, coagulating. Black is an achievement’ James Hillman
June 2023
The House of Ash. 2019-2020
Wreckage. 2023-2024
Fire and Heat have the capacity both to create and destroy, to calm and produce fear. They can be used to harden, strengthen, and make materials fragile, fragile to the point where the material becomes lifeless and falls apart as ash.
June 2023
Robert Walser writes about ash, ‘if one goes into this apparently uninteresting subject in any depth there is quite a lot to be said about it which is not at all uninteresting; if, for example, one blows on ash it displays not the least reluctance to fly of instantly in all directions. Ash is submissiveness, worthlessness, irrelevance itself, and best of all, it is itself pervaded by the belief that it is fit for nothing. Is it possible to be more helpless, more impotent, and more wretched than ash? Not very easily. Could anything be more compliant and more tolerant? Hardly. Ash has no notion of character and is further from any kind of wood than dejection is from exhilaration. Where there is ash there is actually nothing at all. Tread on ash, and you will barely notice that you have stepped on anything’.
June 2023
keith frake
Artist statement: In the late 1970s I studied Fine art at Newcastle and then obtained an MA from the Department of Environmental Media at the Royal College of Art. My practice then was predominantly performance, video and installation based. I was a founder member of the Ayton Basement, a contemporary arts space on Newcastle’s quayside, established to exhibit a wide variety of mixed media work.
I have exhibited work at many galleries within the UK including the Acme Gallery London, Butlers Wharf London, Robert Self Gallery Newcastle, Ikon Gallery Birmingham and have also shown films and videos at many festivals in Europe.
In 1989 I trained as a teacher and taught in schools in London and Devon.
I have always retained my interest in art and other forms of cultural practice and often introduced my ideas in educational situations through artist in residency schemes.
Ten years ago, I started painting, drawing, and making objects. My work fuses together interests in the physical processes of Alchemy, its theoretical, cultural origins with aspects of Archaeology.
June 2023
Recent Exhibitions:
Caput Mortuum — After the Fire - October 2022
Between Heaven and Hell - August 2020
