Drawing Set

The Prophet and the Bees - Exhibition at Shakes Galerie, Prague

My second solo exhibition, held in Shakes Galerie, U Lužického semináře 10, Praha, from 15.1.2010 to 15.2.2010. I had my brown notebooks on display, and unfortunately (to put it mildly) one of them went missing during the exhibit. Nine months of annotated research, writing, and drawings for my upcoming MA gone all at once. That'll teach me the folly of not backing everything up online...

The series of large (~6' x 2') works after which the show was titled are mixed media monoprints / drawings based on the idea of pareidolia, or seeing patterns in random stimuli. They are process-works, printed with ink-soaked scraps of paper, which leave a variety of traces. These traces are built up into layers of texture, which begin to suggest forms. I then use a variety of hand-media to bring out the forms I 'read-into' the textures. Perhaps because of the nature of the semi-dreaming process I use, or perhaps simply because of my preoccupation with mythology and symbols, the forms which emerge from this process tend to be resonant with linked symbolism and implied narrative. I then add handwritten and transfer-type words and letters that spontaneously occur to me when staring at the images. The forms and texts are added to slowly over a number of weeks, and the creation of the four works in the series overlapped, leading to a spontaneous 'intertextuality.' In this way the works become a non-linear myth cycle, with a variety of narrative paths between the figures and objects.

In order, the work shown in the photographs is:

"Judge" (2009) rope, brass tripod, electrical socket.

"Hi-Viz" (2009) found board, highlighters, pencils, correction fluid, drawing ink.

"The Prophet and the Bees" and "Perpetual Apocalypse" (2009) , MÅLA paper, drawing ink, highlighters, pencils, markers, correction fluid, fluoro price stickers, transfer type, fire.

"Plague of Language" and "Skin, or the rubble at Babel" (2009)[materials as prev.].

"Night Map" (2009) found paper, drawing ink, GROG graffiti ink, markers, highlighters, pencils, correction fluid, fluoro price stickers, transfer type, fire, jigsaw piece.

Many thanks to Natalia Vasquez Photography for the images.

Monkey Table

Monkey Table is the first complete sculpture from a series of 'zoomorphic' works I intend to make, highlighting the ways in which objects can be read as characters or creatures. It is constructed mostly from found materials I came across on walks through Prague.

Tiny Worker Says, Tiny Microscope Says, and the Eisegetics Institute ashtray

Atlas

This is a work-in-progress: a large sculpture (for me) made from a table, a concrete sphere and a section of burnt lace. It stands about 70cm high and 40cm wide. The shape of the lace mirrors the 2007 minimum of Arctic sea ice, which happened in mid-September, with the centre of the design corresponding to the Pole. I hope to find some finer lace and make one to scale with the globe, as this one is two or three times too big.

This piece is part of an ongoing project based around the contents of The Eisegete's Study, a room implying/implied by a character I'm working on partly inspired by Origen Adamantius and St. Jerome. Carving Nature at the Joints, The Cartographer's Song and The Second or Third Temptation are also related to this project.

The Cartographer's Song

This sculpture is made from an altered illuminated globe, re-covered in latex-impregnated paper held together with string. On the latex is a sort of omnidirectional 'song' or concrete poem in which the Cartographer prays for mercy and peace. I completed this piece about two months ago while putting my paper portfolio together.

Carving Nature at the Joints

This letter is carved from the medial epicondyle of a lamb's humerus and is approximately 2.5 x 3 x 2 cm. It was carved using a grinding disk and drill. The varied colouring and texture results from the transition between compacted outer bone and the spongy inner bone found inside the epiphysis. The piece was partly inspired by my recent visit to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Some of the most fascinating and terrifying exhibits was an example of the severely "anaklosed" skeleton of a 30 year old man who suffered from an extremely rare genetic disorder now called fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva. This disease causes muscles, tendons and ligaments to be gradually replaced with bone, imprisoning the sufferer within their own ossifying body. The bowed skeleton was like nothing I have ever seen, a cage of bone interlaced with baroque excrescences, the back an almost solid mass of arching bone. The body, like so many medical curiosities, was almost certainly taken from its grave and sold without the permission of the former owner or his relatives. What a profession, to search for the country for tales of people with rare conditions. Tracking down the bodies of rare mistakes to sell to interested gentlemen bent on acquiring the rarest specimens, pitting their prized collections against one another in the spirit of friendly scientific rivalry. The pieces, the collectors and their culture, all written in the same flawed shifting alphabet.

The A Game

On the occasion of my completion of the First Round of The A Game, I here begin a weblog charting its progress and vagueries. These images of the board and single pawn were taken during the Line of Thought exhibition held at Paintworks, Bristol (16/05/07...).

The board comprises sixty four separate tiles, each just shy of one foot square, on 3/4" fibreboard. Each was produced as an individual image and no two are the same, although motifs are echoed by more than one tile and there are several sets of tiles produced using similar techniques.


A list of materials and equipment:
MDF
Indian Ink
Quink
Mitsubishi "Eye" Pens
Corretion Fluid
PVA
Polyfilla
Acrylic
Acrylic-based Varnish
White Emulsion
Solvent-based Gold and Silver Inks
Gesso
Porcelain
Pastel
Graphite
Grass-stains
Salt
Wax
Iron Wire
Thread
Transfer Type
Printed Map
Blowtorch
Spot-welder
Firelighting Gel
Scalpel
Axe


The pawn was made by hand from porcelain and then fired and glazed. The Second Round of the game will involve making a full set of pieces from a variety of materials, including carved sea coal, brass and latex. I have begun my preliminary researches for the Second Round and hope to have completed the four Rooks by early 2008.



Some points of departure:

The Alphabet: The history of the Alphabet is one of abstraction and the evolution of graphic memes. Basic hieroglyphic forms which could double up as syllables in names or for use in words which had no hieroglyph were adapted by Egypt’s Semitic population for use with their own language. This altered body of signs was then eventually taken up by the Greeks, who further simplified and abstracted the images.

The original pictographic signs were worn smooth by countless hands, simplified by an endless process of Chinese whispers until they became abstract shapes. These 26 sigils were useful precisely because they are meaningless, empty signs that can be filled over and over again. With centuries of use, however, the letters of the alphabet have gained faint meaning again, not least because of the development of alphabet books for to help children memorise the letters (A is for Apple and so on).



Chess: The evolution of the abstract chess piece follows a similar course to the alphabet, travelling hundreds of miles between people who only half understood one another. The original Indian forms were themselves the result of centuries of development, a set of complex miniature sculptures rich with symbolic detail. When chess was taken up by the Arabic world, their religious prohibition of representational images meant that new pieces were made, retaining only the rough silhouettes of the Indian originals for recognition.

From the Middle East, these abstract pieces were taken all over Europe, and gradually over the following centuries marking and then full relief was added to the pieces in the tradition of Mediæval European carving. During this period, older abstract sets in precious materials remained in play, and many cheaper sets were made for use by the general public. These sets, often of ceramics or turned wood, were a mixture of abstract forms and representational elements because of the cost of carving.

The abstraction and then loss of the original representational forms was a critical development, however, because it allowed a pluralism of ideas about the form and meaning of the pieces. Across Europe, pieces were made differently. This meant that during the Renaissance, new abstract forms for the pieces could be invented. Many such forms were inspired by the wood turning process. These were combined with representational crowns for each piece to aid in identification.




Games: There is a certain kind of looking that only comes when one is deep in a game. Attention is enhanced, narrowed. Schooled to certain stimuli, the mind overlays an invisible lacework of potential correspondences onto the eye. Relentlessly, the eye attempts to bore into the surfaces of things, only to glance off them, restlessly flitting from one knot to another and back. Looking, looking. All the while feeling the threads linking the knots, feeling the tremor of a movement in the web, feeling the fine lines like a hair under the eyelid, feeling that maddening itch of something on the edge of perception.

It is as though I am playing a game of chess inside myself. I can feel the subtle power of making a move, but I have not yet found how to make a board and pieces outside myself to share the game with other people. (Sometimes a calligraphic line can mirror part of the game for the instant after I draw it.) Any object can become a pawn, any word. Each square on the board contains another board. Each move is like a song.

A different game is being played out in the world, as unlike to my game as death is to life. The A Game. In this game I am less than a pawn. Lead moves into flesh. Money changes hands.