About Tartessos Gerry King September 2012 MUSINGS, IMAGES AND WORKS Tartessos Series and Tartessos Novo Series We tell ourselves that there are certainties upon which all can be understood.  Yet the demise of ‘unsinkable’ ships is legend, the ‘war to end all wars’ didn’t, societies labeled ‘primitive’ had and/or have complex understandings of society,  medicine and the environment [and sparing the rod hasn’t spoilt the child].  From these ponderings rose the Tartessos Series and more lately the Tartessos Novo Series.  In a lifetime in which fundamentals of science have been shown to be erroneous I have learnt the delight of suspicion of a ‘certainty’ that may be asserted but not proven.  Such ‘mental gymnastics’, like all other experience, is liable to provide fodder for the expressive act.  Individual works and complete series discover a heartbeat in the porridge of the artist’s cultural, social, intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual daily path.  On occasion some combination of musings, drawn from experiences of incomparable significance,  though not necessarily evident to the viewer, interlock to give form to inspiration.       Conceived individually, each work of these series explores the notion of assembling a composition from a juxtaposition of related and disparate elements. The notion is that some of the components obviously belong to the whole  while others may arguably be so attributed.  As such, they reflect my interest in the manner in which theories pertaining to the artefacts of earlier times are evidenced in museum collections.  Certainly the displayed objects are of intrinsic interest but beyond that is intrigue with the story in which they are encapsulated by the process of collecting and curating.   Tartessos is variously thought to be an alternative name for Atlantis or another lost city, perhaps located in what is now Portugal.  Tartessian culture is documented yet there are significant abscesses in our understanding of the people and their artefacts.  It is the uncertainty that draws me to ‘Tartessos’ as the title for these works.