A Collection of Forms
The series of drawings I've been working on are an expanded and abstract series utilising multiple mediums to move through space. They range from approximately fifty centimetres to over two meters. Each of them relates to my body with heights coming up to my arms or chest and lines following gestures I could make with my arm. I believe this is a response to my contemporary dance background, it is a style where the body becomes sculptural. This scale provides ease of manoeuvrability for constructing and adjusting works. I also aim to instil the sense of an entity with which the viewer shares the room. I do not want these drawings to become large enough to be the space, nor small enough to feel like they could live on your bookshelf. Individual people have a physical relationship with a single chair or broom, while the scale of a table makes it a destination and the size of a wallet takes it into the realm of the handbag
Materials in use include, plaster, wood, steel, found furniture plastic, resin, cardboard, clay, glaze, gloss paints, salt, found vinyl seating, creepy crawly pipe, and other found objects. In each work materials have been selected for their innate properties including colour, weight, strength and found objects are chosen for their predesigned aesthetics. Many of the compositions are built up around a piece of found material or a particular shape I constructed; in each case the addition of other elements was aimed to create a resolved aesthetic proposition for each independent drawing. My process is mostly instinctual and once visualised the construction process rarely varies from the image in my mind. Each new material or form to me represents a different kind of mark making, some heavy and bold others soft or flexible. Many include a meeting of volume and line. I take inspiration from Anthony Caro's aesthetic and the sense of equilibrium balanced with motion across his sculptural work. Some of the pieces have elements in common such as the repeat casting of a crafted wooden soccer ball into different coloured plaster. This gives the series a connected thread, I aim for commonality not interdependence, I want each piece to retain a distinct personality. The works of Louise Paramor serve as inspiration in this regard, they are cohesive and bright but no two are the same, bordering on one large work when installed. Installation is important to this collection as it allows for the common thread of thought throughout the pieces to be seen and for them to play off each other, I intend for the installation to be recalibrated in response to the dimensions of the space they find themselves in |