Rudder (A continuous project, altered daily), 2022/24
I imagine ‘Rudder’ indexing not only marked moments in time but like 'stone-tape', a recording of events stored in its material fabric, another version of memory brought back through an art work, experienced through the connection of human touch.
Each time ‘Rudder’ is installed the layout and arrangement of tiles is altered; this alteration expresses the fact that each time we might look back over our lives that memory will be different from the last and different again to the next memorialisation of events. This is how ‘Rudder’ works.
The size of a tile is a measurement taken from the span of my hand, index finger to thumb x little finger to thumb, personalising the tiles and the project; this was inspired by Alighiero e Boetti's 'Towards a natural history of measurement', 1970.
The tiles are made from bisque fired 'Vulcan Black Stoneware', a natural hand moulded clay reminiscent of ancient craft traditions in the way it holds the essential quality of human mark making, marks not intended as signature but merely as evidence of being.
Untitled (Paper Sizes and Film Formats), 2023/24
Steeped in traditional systems and methodology, this project objectifies something of our industrial and empirical past; suggesting the notion of a deep history and a realignment of our understanding of that history.
So many things from our industrial past harbour concerns linked to our present better understanding of history; this project contains an underlying regard to the name and origin of the ‘Imperial’ paper sizes which are inseparably linked with the history of the British Empire; mere mention of one can only remind us of the other.
Before, there were a number of different sized plate cameras, and consequently as many photographic film or plate formats; in memorialising these historic examples of film formats we romanticise on artisan skills and self-fulfilling labour; strangely these systems coexisted during the same time period and applied to the provenance of both the established ruling class and the working class alike.
Philosopher, Vilém Flusser, tells us that ‘the cultural condition is captured in the act of photography rather than in the object being photographed’, also that ‘images are significant surfaces, signifying mainly something out there in space and time that they have to make comprehensible to us as abstractions’.
Applying cross hatched areas of film format sizes to imperial paper sizes reminds us of the two realities; as reinvention the drawn film format sizes translate to both memorialise and deny the photographic process; by applying these drawings to ‘Imperial’ paper sizes reflects empirical nostalgia whilst attempting to signify surface and make comprehensible to us the cultural condition.
Untitled (Talking with Piero), 2023/24
The series is influenced by Piero Della Francesca and Italian Renaissance colour coding.
The work takes place on the discarded remnants of clay stained canvas discarded from the manufacture of terracotta clay tiles.
Templates in various size grids establish compositions of colour and frequency according to the terracotta stains on the canvas; they are directly influenced by the landscapes and atmospheric placing of figures and forms seen in Piero’s fresco cycle ‘The Legend of the True Cross’ .