Artist's Statement

“I believe that art is the only form of activity in which man shows himself to be a true individual. Only in art is he capable of going beyond the animal state, because art is an outlet towards regions which are not ruled by time and space.”

Marcel Duchamp, 1956

My practice is strongly connected to my personal experiences and one of the experiences which has influenced me was working for an organisation which looks after the interests of people who have suffered a brain injury. I am interested in how our memories and cognitive function inform our identities, and this as well as other personal experiences has given me an understanding, which affects how I approach my practice. I build installations that consist of drawing, painting and found objects with an aim to illustrate and redraw from memory and create an alternative space-time. The main concept is that memories shape the self and our perceptions of the world. They are constantly re-imagined and alter with time, and by reinstalling a representation of remembered place onto a space, one can transcend time and space. The installations are temporary in their nature, placing them within a relevant context to my practice.

Chance is an important element in my work. I am more interested in immediate and instinctive mark-making than the aesthetic, and I believe failure must be embraced in order to create a possibility for the creative and the radical. Part of my process is translation. I make drawings from memory, usually without looking at the page (to concentrate on the original memories rather than the aesthetic produced, and to introduce elements of chance) and draw often in a continuous line with biro on paper. I then translate these 2D drawings into 3D form, re-drawing them in space using sculptural materials and found objects. I find the process of remembering linked to the process of re-working and translation that I undertake.

In recreating from my memories and personal experiences, I create temporary installations which will only survive in traces though their documentation, but exist in their entirety through the physical experience of the work, which then constitutes to the memories and experiences of the viewer, creating a collective memory out of my own imagined reality. Another of my concerns is that of the inclusion of the viewer within the work of art. Not in a participatory role such as is the case within performance art, but purely by being immersed within the space of the work and the experience one has whilst they are incorporated into it. My intention is to break down the space between work of art and viewer in order to make the work more inclusive and democratic. I have done this by painting a whole space rather than producing a painting on a 2D surface, which the viewer then enters and becomes a part of the work. In this way I aim to form some common ground with the viewer, rather than the work being singular or exclusive.

I utilise the domestic within my narrative which provides a familiar and shared environment as a way into the work. I often reuse objects or re-work a previous installation in order to form a continuum and natural progression over the course of the period of production of the works and in doing so, form a narrative through the translations and copies which are made, which relates to the nature of cognitive function and our experience of the world.

My work serves as a temporary substitute for something which is and continues to be absent, and which cannot be represented and therefore in it's nature it can inevitably only fail.

Thesis

My thesis, titled 'Art in Time and Space', deals with the possibility of the new within contemporary art through the use of fiction, the unreal, and more specifically, science fiction.  What I argue is that in order to make radical art which is engaging, it must utilise a balance of part-real part-fiction to make a new space for the viewer to exist in.  I am still exploring these ideas and have also been writing about time travel as a device for unravelling truths.  

I have so far been looking at Nicolas Bourriaud's theories on radicalist art and what he has deemed the 'Altermodern' period, and how relevant I believe his ideas to be.  I have discussed the work of the artists Tacita Dean, Robert Smithson and Mike Nelson and their connections to the science fiction writer J. G. Ballard.  Since visiting the Turner Prize and reading an article in Frieze on The Otolith Group, my ideas have further developed on the role failure has in understanding alternative futures. Since I have more recently begun to research the necessity of failure in order to produce something original, I aim to next read Hal Foster's essay Who's Afraid of the Neo Avant-Garde in 'Return of the Real'.  I need to begin to restructure my arguments based on my recent research in order to clarify what it is I am describing within my thesis and to make my arguments more coherent.

Current painting in progress

The following photos document the progress of a painting which I am still currently working on.  It's source was an original drawing made using black biro on paper, drawn with eyes closed from a memory of the living space in my old flat. I am approaching this painting as a process of drawing and correcting, of adding then taking away detail, so the process of remembering is documented within the work.

Initial drawings made in pencil then corrected with black permanent marker.

I quite liked the drawing at this stage but continued to work into it.

The drawing was then worked into in blocks using coloured acrylic paint.

I then worked back into the drawing using the marker pen.

I like the layering and jumbled quality of the lines here, but decided it was time to start taking out some of the details in order to re-work the image later.

At this stage I decided to erase most of the detail by pouring a mixture of white acrylic paint and water over the painting. 
I had to do this a few times and in layers to get a good coverage.

Here I worked over the detail with white oil bar. 
This is shown alongside some of the original drawings on paper whilst my studio was set up for assessment.

At this stage it was exhibited in the dark space adjacent to AG26, alongside other connected work.  This is as far as I had got with the painting at the end of the summer term last year, at which time I was in the process of stripping back the oil bar in order to try to expose the drawings underneath.

Here are the more recent photos documenting the progress of the painting: 

I have at this stage decided to stop working on it and consider it finished.

Things That Aren't There No. 3

My last exhibition consisted of two separately located installations with Chelsea Art College.  Above shows the work exhibited within the triangle space as part of a group show curated by myself and a fellow student. The work is part of a series of installations based on memory and loss.  All the work is made using drawings made from memory; these original drawings were to be displayed, though I removed them as part of the editing process so they remained as source material only.  The house painting and the bed sculpture shown below and the final photo showing the living room painting are all translations of these original drawings.

Detail of installation within the triangle space

Second installation shown in A Block

The second show was located in A Block. The adjoining room to this was also used as part of the space.  In the central room I exhibited an installation piece consisting of sculpture, readymades and a text piece.  

The adjoining space

Detail of sculpture

This shows the sculpture as it was being installed. It is made from wire and bent by hand and is based on a line drawing of a bed.  When shaping the wire I aimed to stay true to the style of the original drawing.  The sculpture is suspended from the central heating pipes.

The final photo (shown below) shows the work installed within the dark space adjacent to this work.  This is a painting made using a large MDF sheet, pencil, pemanent marker, acrylic paint and oil bar.  This painting is based on a drawing of the living space of a flat I once lived in.  This painting was created as a process of adding and erasing detail as I remembered the room and corrected the details.  I will document this process in a seperate blog entry. 

Painting shown in dark room space