Education My recent work seeks to heighten our sense of the uncanny in familiar settings and presupposed forms. This interest has manifested itself in the production of hyper-real sculptures that employ the use of prop and model making techniques to emphasise the illusionary nature of the object. One aspect of my work involves the dichotomy between the photographic image and the actual events and inherited memories that accompany them. This has taken the form of several mono-chromatically painted figures - displaced from their historical setting and transplanted into new situations. This act of relocation serves to question our nostalgic relationship to the past by creating an unsettling paradox. Another area of interest involves the making of functionless model buildings and structures .These artworks contain certain cultural and historical references, which include the typographical images of Bernd and Hilla Becher, Brutalist design and the 'dust bowl' photographs of walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, that epitomised the devastation of the great depression. I wanted to use the look of architectural impoverishment in these images as a signifier of that particular point in time and the psychological shadow cast by economic decline. In making three dimensional models I sought to re-contextualise the image and give it a physical presence that embodies past events but also has an independent existence as an art object. A common thread linking these Architecturally inspired sculptures are the use of forgotten, overlooked, awkward and sometimes ugly additions to the built environment. I like the sense of disorder that architectural anomalies bring to the homogenised urban landscape. In absorbing this idiosyncratic vernacular I hope to give voice to to an alternative sense of beauty through the appreciation of the odd and incongruous spaces and places around us.
2008 - Group show - St Ives Society of Artists. St Ives 2009 – Architectural model – Mossley Mill public art commission for Anthony Lyons Artist/designer. The Undetectables (2002-2005) Site leader construction/painting and design consultation- Selected prop making and scenic painting (1998 -2001) Nokia Stand.- World Telecoms Convention. Dick George & Co 'Great Expectations' BBC Drama. - Whetton & Grosh, Wandsworth, London 'The Visitors' - Universal Studios. Dick George & Co. Shepperton. Surrey 'The Mummy' - Universal Studios. Dick George & Co, Shepperton, Surrey 'The Golden Bowl' - Merchant Ivory. Dick George & Co. |