‘20% of What I Remember, Age 7’- detail

Using both thread, pencil, clay and text enables me to create overlapping systems of representation, which reference not only architecture and interiors, but also objects, landscapes, mapping notations, timelines and abstract marks.
The resulting image clusters create what I like to think of as partially bleached out stories and incomplete translations of memories.

They are about the emotional life, that series of narratives (improvisations) between what is whole and what the mind thinks of as whole. The openness of the construction, the spaces between spaces and the different kinds of representations, encourage the viewer to constantly construct and reconstruct, creating the narrative and then losing it as schematized spaces and multiple elevations come to the fore and then recede. The installations as a whole might be regarded as a negative image (largely absent of color) that take the form of an outline of a narrative. As such, they register the emptiness inside an event. They might also be thought of as x-ray outlines of our feelings or as drawings whose various emotional and architectural spaces need to be filled in.
Narration tends to be associated with the two dimensional, linear and temporal realms, and in these pieces I have tried to translate narrative, perhaps the idea of narrative itself, into a three dimensional space. To this end, I use the suspended thread to create structures which “ghost” some sort of underlying structure of meaning.

The work addresses the use of the wall and offers a revision of painting within the space of sculptural installation. The pieces play illusionistic (and literal) depth against schematized structures and they work to draw a picture or construct a temporary architecture of the feelings.

‘Untitled’ – detail

Images:
1. & 4. – ‘Eleven Places That My Feelings Lived’- detail 2007. 162 x 268 x 20cm Thread, nails, pencil, modelling clay & card.
2. & 5. – ‘20% of What I Remember, Age 7’- detail 2006. 205 x 150 x 22cm Thread, nails & pencil.
3. – ‘Untitled’ – detail 2007. 64 x 46 x 2cm Thread, nails, pencil & card.
6. – ‘Self Portrait in Mirror’ – detail 2006. 90 x 55 x 2cm Thread, nails & pencil.