Brick for Stone

i'm experimenting with new approaches to the problem of linking objects to networks of meaning and context. here, the clue to the puzzle is hidden in the shadow of the object. it's a reference to the Biblical Tower of Babel story, an important founding text or point of departure for much of my work. in the passage referenced, the builders of Babel are described as using "brick for stone". here we have a brick so worn by its time in the sea that it's taken on the shape of a stone. the Babel story has undergone a similar process; something that was once clearly man-made has become something (mis)taken for a natural, inevitable form. this story, so worn by time and in the telling, is one of thousands that make up the foundations of our culture.

Installation Detail: Quotamatic

Installation Detail: abcDiagram

Installation Detail: The Detective

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

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 2nd or 3rd Temptation

This painting is on a one metre square box canvas, with indian ink, latex, graphite and gilding wax. Plus the ubiquitous transfer type. I am in the process of putting together a small exhibition for Lent about translation and faith: this is the last in a triptych and shows the 2nd or 3rd (depending on whether you credit Luke 4:5-8 or Matthew 4:8-11) temptation of Jesus. After his baptism, Jesus fasts for 40 days in the desert and is then tempted by the devil. Here's Luke in the King James 1611 translation:

5And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

6And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.

7If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.

8And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

This event parallels those of Deuteronomy 34:1-4 where after 40 days fasting the LORD leads Moses to the top of Pisgah and shows him all the lands Israel will inherit. This will be the first of my Lent triptych, the second being Genesis 11:1-9, the Tower of Babel passage.

full stop.

This little strange piece I made for the MORTAL show but decided against exhibiting. It would have been eclipsed by 'the a game', sending out an even more confused message than that deliberately polyphonic, encyclopædic folly does on its own. The fragment of bone is from my mother's medical school skeleton. I don't know if it is still the case, but when my parents were at medical school in London each student had two skeletons; their own and another. All that remains of my mother's is a mess of bones in a white plastic bag, missing most parts but with some curious additions. How does one acquire a spare jaw?

If respect even comes into it, is using a part of some unknown body to make a work of trite art worse than leaving it in a bag? Somehow I couldn't bring myself to set scalpel to that fragment of spongy bone. Somehow I ended up shaping it with my teeth, picking at it with my nails as if it were part of my own body. How small a part of someone is taboo? Some cells are more sacred than others, even now. Eggs and seed. The chest was already broken, using it was a little step.

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.