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.

The Ruin

I am now living in Prague. There is a place here I call The Ruins. One day I found men there. They were marking up the ruins with their bright paint, whether for reconstruction or demolition I do not know. The paint is brighter than anything around it; it takes invisible energy and makes it into light.

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.

The Map Tree

This is a small acrylic painting on box canvas (18x13cm) incorporating sections of road map and fragments of wing-mirror. I made this painting in 2005 while experimenting with painting maps, and making a lot of work about journeys, growth and change.

Flexible Territory

This was made using latex and transfer type and is approximately a meter square. It is a "print" taken with liquid latex from a folded metal sheet stained with earth and ash, on which a fire had been set that burned through the center of the metal. The dried latex was then carefully and laboriously peeled from the sheet. Adding the rhumb lines was tricky as latex doesn't take ink particularly well, but I was pleased at how well the transfer type adhered. At this size, it is quite difficult to spot (look for a small number of scattered white letters).

I have been meaning for some time to make a flexible piece that was both map and territory. Ragged coastlines and damaged documents share a certain quality of torn, fractal edge, that sense of the 'giantiny' I mentioned in the Found Paintings post.

undemonstrata

This is a small prototype for a series of drawings I intend to make about text, cartography and the city. The creased landscape of paper is covered with fragmented prose about the reading of a landscape. More Sinclair inspired, Situationist, psychogeographical, Joycean mumblings.